


Children's Crusade

by iathsdaughter



Series: Towards the Encroaching Darkness [4]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: CPTSD, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Night Terrors, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Past childhood sexual abuse, Past non-consensual drug use, Smut, Substance Abuse, Tags updated with each chapter, confronting an abuser, if you're here for the smut go to chapter 31 but it won't make too much sense on its own, past minor suicidal ideation, past sexual slavery, undiagnosed dysthymia, violations of space HIPAA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 12:00:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 47
Words: 112,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iathsdaughter/pseuds/iathsdaughter
Summary: For five years, the galaxy has been rebuilding after the end of the Reaper War. There was nothing to bury of Shepard other than some pictures and mementos, and while the other companions have managed to find something meaningful in their lives, Garrus is still haunted without closure. Now an advisor to the the Primarch, Garrus finds himself out of his league as far as politics and missing Shepard more than ever.Everything changes, however, when one dark night, Shepard shows up at his apartment asking for help. She refuses to tell Garrus why she disappeared for five years, and Garrus finds himself pulled into a political disaster involving turian government officials, an aging hospital, and sketchy credit trails all the while trying to learn what Shepard has been doing during the five years she let him mourn her.Now finally COMPLETED. With a hint toward a sequel I will never actually write, please don't get your hopes up.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: Towards the Encroaching Darkness [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1207191
Comments: 246
Kudos: 119





	1. Stage Four

If there was one thing that Garrus had learned in the intervening years after the Reaper War, it was that rebuilding was harder than any wartime strategy. He had been stupid to think it would all end if they destroyed the Catalyst. He had been so hopeful, because Shepard could do anything, couldn’t she? There was nothing that had stopped her before, and she’d seen a hell of a lot and done the impossible, so why worry about something so small as a one-on-one situation.

Garrus let out a sharp breath as he tried to think about literally anything other than that topic.

He had been staring absently at a projection of part of Palaven’s landscape where areas of rubble had been demarcated for different projects. The orange, see-through lights were a place he had known well when he was younger, a legal district in the capital, but there was nearly nothing left to tell him that beyond the holographic label at the base of the projection.

Officer. Reaper Expert. Advisor to the Primarch. They were all just titles, and currently the last one meant that Garrus, whose extent of architecture education was limited to scoping out a building for combat, was okaying plans for some structures he had no idea where the money would come from or who would build them.

He was supposed to do something more than just stare at the plans blankly, he was sure, but beyond that what could they possibly want from him? It looked fine. This was just a plan drawn up by someone who actually knew what they were doing. An asari, actually. Garrus had met her once. She had studied turian architecture as a student and as long as she was given a room and some levo food, she was happy to work more or less for free. She wanted to use her work for another degree she was looking to get or something.

“Fuck it,” he murmured under his breath and tapped the button which sent the plans onto the next person on the advisory committee to look at. He’d given a seal of approval to a bunch of random lines that he didn’t know anything about, and he didn’t feel any better for it, but at least it was off of his docket.

There was a dozen more plans for him to look at, too, but the night-cycle had started hours ago, and Garrus knew that if he kept it up, he would start approving things that absolutely shouldn’t be approved. The asari’s work was one thing, since she seemed to know what she was doing when it came to angles and numbers, but advising Victus meant that he was also looking through legislature and any other number of things he was equally faking his way through.

With a swipe of his hand, he turned the display off. Without the orange lights, the small room he had been working in was not only almost entirely dark, but also seemed so much bigger. That settled in his heart emptily.

The universe was so much bigger now without buildings and whatever percentage of its population that it had lost. There still weren’t accurate statistics, even half a decade in. The last major statistic, released by a group of salarian scientists, put the losses at twenty to thirty percent of all sentient known life-forms in the galaxy, with humans and asari accumulating the heaviest losses.

The whole universe just felt like another empty room, and that was the last thought Garrus let himself have along that line before forcing himself to leave. When he opened the door, he was greeted by the low fluorescent lights which had been dimmed for the night-cycle. The hallway leading down to the exit was empty, since apparently everyone else in the turian embassy had apparently gone home some time ago, leaving Garrus to wonder exactly how long he’d been staring at maps.

By the time Garrus reached the front desk, he wasn’t shocked to find that there was only one other living soul in the embassy.

“You should have locked up,” Garrus only semi-seriously chastised the other turian who sat at the desk.

“And what? End up with war hero, Primarch-advising Garrus Vakarian setting off the embassy alarms and getting C-Sec involved in the dead of night? That loses me a job,” Hercus returned, his mandibles flaring in the turian equivalent of a smile.

“Should have interrupted me.”

“If you’re done now, I can lock up, but if you really want, we could get C-Sec involved.”

Hercus had been the embassy’s secretary for as long as Garrus had been working from the Citadel, where Victus had asked him to keep an eye on the reconstruction. The young turian had first seen combat during the Reaper invasion, and when he had first met Garrus, his green eyes had lit up like those trees humans decorated in the winter.

Shepard had made sure one was set up in the Normandy. For morale, she had said. Ash had seemed pretty excited about it, especially after Tali had managed to get some sort of stringed lights working on it.

“No use wasting their time,” Garrus shrugged off.

There was a time when he might have enjoyed talking about how C-Sec was useless, about how he had outgrown the job, but now when he wished he hadn’t, he couldn’t find it inside himself to talk about the job at all. Besides, almost no one he knew still worked there anymore anyway.

They had pretty much all died.

“Is your apartment far from here?” Hercus asked as he followed Garrus out of the entry way and locking the doors behind them from a pad on the wall.

“No.”

“You’re just lucky we finally got rid of that curfew.”

Garrus grunted noncommittally. The curfew had been instated to keep enterprising individuals from raiding parts of the Citadel which had yet to be cleared, and after what he had seen on Omega, he knew it had been a necessary move. It was only in the last year that they had managed to clear the area where the center of the Crucible had been.

Where Shepard should have been.

Fuck.

It really was late if he’d thought about her twice in ten minutes. It had been like that in the beginning, worse even. He’d thought someone would find her, and she would chastise him for thinking she could die at all. She hadn’t on Mindoir, and she hadn’t on Akuze, and she’d only been dead for two years back when they thought their biggest issue was the Collectors.

Five years had not dulled that imaginary scene in Garrus’ mind.

“Garrus? Garrus did you hear what I said?”

Garrus whipped back to look at the other turian to find that Hercus was giving him an odd look.

“I asked if you wanted to get drinks? Tell me some war stories?”

The kid sounded hopeful, which was the worst part. Even if Garrus had any stories he wanted to tell, they would all just betray that he had peaked before he was even fifty. The next hundred or so years were all going to be a downhill slide, and just that thought made Garrus reconsider wanting to say no to the kid. Drinks sounded good, all things considered. The stories, though? That was what sealed the very abrupt shake of his head.

“Thanks, but I need to be up early and not hungover,” Garrus replied, trying to keep his tone joking.

Fortunately, Hercus didn’t seem upset.

“Some other time?”

“Yeah. Some other time when I don’t have to brief the Primarch in the morning.”

Hercus laughed, but all Garrus could think about was how glad he was that the other turian bought his cheap lie.

“See you tomorrow, then, Advisor,” Hercus said as he gave a sharp salute.

“At ease. And next time? Just tell me to finish up. You’re too young to be spending half the night at a desk.”

Hercus gave a laugh and a nod, but noticeably not a promise to do so in the future. He was a good turian, Garrus thought as he turned his back and began to walk in the direction of his apartment. Hercus had tasted battle young and had done well. He had received a medal, Garrus had heard at some point, and had lost two of his fingers in the war. He listened to his superiors and believed that those above him knew what they were doing.

Garrus had known he was a bad turian ever since he received the first comm message from his father after leaving C-Sec.

Without realizing it, Garrus had brought one of his hands to his head. There was no one around, even though there wasn’t a curfew anymore, but Garrus felt the need to play off the movement as something casual, so he dragged it down his fringe for no audience but himself.

The walk was mundane, and Garrus only passed a single other person, a human wearing an outfit which labeled her as a member of the Citadel cleaning crew. There were no more Keepers, so people had been hired to actually keep the place tidy now, but a few years ago, Garrus knew that the woman had surely been pulling bodies out of rubble. Maybe she had even found Shepard’s and not known it.

Maybe Shepard had been burned up, and there was nothing left of her to even find. With the recycled air in the Citadel, maybe he was even breathing her in at that moment.

Garrus let out of a hiss of a breath.

He needed to sleep. He would have nightmares, sure, but who didn’t anymore? At least in his nightmares he wasn’t absent-mindedly considering the fact that he might just be inhaling anything that was left of the woman he had loved.

He would sleep, he would have nightmares, he would wake up, and it would just be the normal cycle. And he wouldn’t stay up so late again. It only made things worse. It had been recommended to him early on that he should see someone to talk about everything, but Garrus had turned it down. There were people who had seen worse, and there weren’t enough doctors to go around if everyone who had lost someone got a visit. Garrus had said that after a few years, he would reconsider, but he hadn’t. He told himself it was because he was busy. He had the entire population of the surviving turians on his shoulders, and he was not about to waste time talking to someone about things that had happened so long ago.

As Garrus made his way into his apartment building, he found the idea of even making it to his bed too much. His apartment was the only one on this level, so it wasn’t like anyone would find out if he just…. took a nap against the wall. In the end, the only thing managed to get him any closer to his door was the fact that he could see from where he was considering sitting down and just giving up that the door was open. And he never forgot to lock his door.

Faster than any stim could have hit him, Garrus found himself completely awake.

He had no weapons on him, and he hadn’t exactly been quiet on his way down the hall, so whoever was in there would have the upper hand already. Quietly, he made his way until he could see into the open doorway, but all he could see was darkness inside his apartment.

“I’m going to give you one warning,” he offered into the darkness. “I’ve only met one person who could outshoot me, and I don’t exactly appreciate people going through my stuff.”

“Only one person?”

Garrus felt his brain absolutely stop processing. Any thoughts he had, any plans about how he was going to deal with this intruder were slammed against the wall that was that voice. He was frozen, because this couldn’t be reality.

From the darkness, he saw a figure move closer.

“No,” was all he could manage as the light from the hallway finally landed on the face of the intruder. He wasn’t sure what he was refusing, whether it was the fact that his eyes couldn’t be right or that he really hadn’t remembered falling asleep in the hall.

“It’s been a while,” she offered stiltedly, taking another slow step closer.

Garrus might have said something, maybe even repeated himself, but every sense felt short-circuited, because he had to be dreaming or seeing a ghost. The woman in front of him had been dead for longest five years of his life.

The years had aged her. A lot. Her once-black hair was now almost entirely grey, but it was pulled back in the regulation bun she always had it. Her nose still had the crooks in it where she told him it had been broken. She was leaning against a counter, and Garrus could not believe what he was seeing until he locked eyes with her. The cloned Shepard hadn’t had the same eyes. They were genetically identical, sure, the way Shepard looked at him? No one else had ever looked that way at him before, not even someone who was built from the exact same acids, and now her icy blue eyes were locked onto him the exact same way he had relived in all the nightmares where he wasn’t exactly as alone as he feared he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a depression-inspired fic. About depression. Happy holidays. Also the reunion scene was lightly inspired by a comic by ladymadeofglass on deviantart. Strap in for a bumpy ride.


	2. Shadows on the Cave Wall

_“Your apartment is a mess,” Tali commented from where she was laying on the floor. Her visor was angled to be looking under his couch, and Garrus could not even begin to imagine what she was looking at which prompted her to say that._

_“The whole Citadel is a mess,” Garrus retorted as he grabbed another bottle of brandy from his coffee table. He was strewn across a chair which had come with the apartment, but it really wasn’t made for turians, so he found himself drunkenly half-tumbling out of it._

_“The whole Citadel doesn’t have…"_

_Tali reached an unsteady hand under Garrus’ couch and pulled out an empty bottle of alcohol which definitely had some sort of mold or something growing on it. _

_". . .this.” _

_“Somewhere in the rubble, there’s gotta be something worse than that,” was his half-hearted reply._

_Tali didn’t respond much more than to toss the bottle in the general direction of the kitchen, which was only in a slightly better state than the rest of the apartment._

_“You’d think Palaven could afford to give one of their war heroes a better place to stay.”_

_“Are you telling me the other quarian admirals are holding back some secret funds that you know about? Because Palaven has shit now. Rubble. Rubble. More rubble, bodies, and lots of soldiers with no war.”_

_“It’s not so bad—”_

_“Not so bad when you’re all civilians more or less, not career soldiers. And Shepard set you all up with Rannoch.”_

_Tali frowned and pulled herself off the floor slightly to get a better look at Garrus, and he didn’t like the look he was pretty sure she was giving him. It was one of concern, and that didn’t settle well with him. _

_“She was… She did a good job…” Tali thought out loud. It was obvious that she missed Shepard, too. They had been close. All of the crew had been close. _

_And then came the dreaded question which no one has stopped asking since the dust had first cleared._

_“How are you doing about… that… about her?”_

_Garrus did not respond. Instead, he busied himself with looking at his alcohol before finishing what was left of it with a grimace and a shudder. It burned going down, but it was worth it to not feel anything. He had hoped drinking with Tali would have been fun in some way, reminiscent of the good old days when there was a war going on. He should have known she wouldn’t be satisfied to just talk about nothing important. She cared too much._

_“Garrus…” _

_“I’m fine.”_

_“Not having her… body… is hard. I know. Keelah, I wish we could have at least buried her. Ashley really wanted that, too, wanted a service with something there other than pictures and a flag.”_

_“I’m fine.”_

_“Garrus,” Tali murmured, pulling herself up so she was at least mostly on the sofa, so she was nearly at Garrus’ eye level. “Garrus, you can’t keep on like this. She wouldn’t—”_

_“Tali, we’re done talking about this.” _

_“We’re not, though. You’re in pain. You’re alone here. You need—”_

_“I need another damn drink if you’re going to keep at this.” _

_“Bring one for me, then.”_

_Garrus pushed himself to his feet, and the pulsating in his head only grew more painful as he stood to his full height. The few steps to the small kitchen were rough, since every inch seemed to crawl by until he managed to open the right cabinet and pull out the only thing he had left with any real alcohol content: a bottle of wine which he’d been given as a housewarming present by someone or another. _

_It was supposed to be made in some human-style, the label explained, and it was called a rosé and—_

_The alcohol content was 10%, and that was when he stopped bothering to look at all the words. _

_“Got an emergency induction port?” he asked, bracing himself against the counter before looking back at Tali._

_“No, but I’ll only get a bit sick if you give me a clean one.”_

_Tali was giving him a small smile now, but he couldn’t get anything out of it, maybe because the world was spinning around him, though, and it seemed like he was back on the Mako again._

_By the time that thought struck him, he had a glass in hand, was fishing for a straw, and he couldn’t help but let out a cough of a laugh._

_“What—ooh is that wine?” _

_“The finest from… some cheap place on the Citadel… probably…” _

_Tali reached her hands out and greedily took the glass, with its straw, and the bottle in hand. The quality was betrayed by the fact that it was only a screw-top, and after Tali had poured as much as she could for herself, she handed the bottle back to Garrus._

_“You said that you’d need more to keep talking…”_

_“Haven’t had more yet.”_

_And the moment Garrus started to drink straight from the bottle, Tali started again._

_“I know that there is someone you could talk to…”_

_“I don’t need a therapist.”_

_“Everyone needs someone to talk to after… everything that happened…”_

_“Exactly. Everyone needs one. And why would I need to see someone? Because I get sad? Because my apartment looks like shit? There are people who saw their children die and saw massacres, and… I just… I don’t need to talk to anyone.”_

_Tali frowned once more, this time more frustratedly than before. _

_“It’s been a year, and—”_

_“And what? I can get my job done. That’s what matters.”_

_“Is it?” _

_“Yes.” And then in an artless transition, Garrus grasped for the first thing he could think of to talk about literally anything other than the current topic, “Did you see that they’re planning to finally start filming Float and Flotilla again?”_

_“Yes! I heard that they were location scouting finally!”  
_

“Where….”

He had a thousand questions, and with every step that Shepard took toward him, he only found more he hadn’t even dreamt he would be asking.

‘How’ should have been where he started, not ‘where’.

Now, in the weak light, Garrus could see how gaunt she was. She’d always been wiry, and when he’d first met her, he hadn’t understood how she carried the rifle she was so well-known for using. Now, however, he could make out her jawbones and from where the sleeves of her buttoned-up shirt ended, he could see her wrist bones.

“It’s a mess in here, Garrus.”

She said it softly, her eyes sad, and for whatever reason, that was what finally broke Garrus free from his shock. Amidst all the questions, now falling behind his incredulity, was something rising to his chest. Slowly, but it was there.

“What the hell, Shepard.”

It wasn’t a question. He had forgotten all of them now. She was alive, in front of him, after having waited five years to tell him she was even alive, and he could feel it rising in him.

He loved her, and she had left him to think she was dead. People who didn’t know her had called her cold. The word “bitch” wasn’t uncommon to hear from people who found her off-putting. But even from the first time he had spoken with her, trying to get her to help his investigation on Saren, he had seen that even if she was collected, she was not cold.

Now though? He saw no remorse in her gaze.

Anger.

He was feeling anger, and he hadn’t felt it in… as long as he could really remember. All of his exhaustion had been lost to the adrenaline and now the adrenaline was feeding this… anger.

“Took your time,” he managed to say with a relatively level tone, though he clenched his hands into fists.

He had wished that she was alive, but not this way. Not knowing that she had abandoned him.

Rather than respond, Shepard turned away from him and walked further into his apartment.

He had had her six for years, had followed her into any fire fight, into sure death, and now there was nothing he wanted to do less than turn on the lights and shut the door, like he knew she wanted. She was a private person, and she liked to take care of things quietly. Except Udina. She had dealt with him loudly, with one bullet, and that had been a sight to see.

Shepard did not pause when Garrus didn’t follow her, leaving him no choice but to do what she wanted, really.

He flipped on the lights and closed the door and was faced with the sight of Shepard standing near the window that overlooked part of the Presidium. She was in parade rest, but her shoulders were falling forward. She was keeping her center of gravity low, too, with her knees slightly bent. Garrus wasn’t sure what this meant beyond the fact that she was preparing for a physical fight. And she never initiated fights.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” he repeated slowly.

“It’s been hard for you,” she spoke to the window.

The Presidium had been one of the last parts to really be fixed, since it was mostly aesthetic work, and the actual structure was more pressing. They had just gotten the fountains up and working again, and that had been a mess, Garrus had heard, because of piping problems. Something about the shifting of the Citadel into the Crucible had apparently fucked up the plumbing, which made sense all things considered.

“Hard?” he demanded.

“I can see that—”

“See what? See that my place is a mess? Thanks, you already told me. A nice way to say hello again after letting me think you’d been dead for a few years. I appreciate it.”

He was trying to keep himself calm, but this woman in front of him wouldn’t even turn around and face him. She was intently looking out the window, and her tone was so flat. It was the way she had talked to people when she was being the Commander, an icon, not a person. He tried to remember her smile, but all he could see was her holding fiercely to her disaffected parade stance, and all he could feel was the fury in his chest.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

And that was the final straw.

Even if she was trying to keep herself unreadable, he could hear in her voice that she really hadn’t expected that this would hurt him.

“You didn’t mean—?” Garrus asked in a strangled tone. “What did you think would happen? You just… disappear, and everyone moves on? Everyone is happy and gets married and has kids? And you don’t even talk to anyone who cares about you again? Yeah, that seems really likely.”

She was a strategic genius. How could she not have known what would happen?

“We all mourned you!” he continued when Shepard gave no response but to tense slightly. “You just left us all! We needed you! The galaxy needed you!”

He stopped before he could say what he wanted to say most.

He had needed her, more after the war had ended than ever before.

Shepard took in an audible, long, slow breath.

“I can’t ask you to not be angry—” 

“Correct,” he cut off at a growl.

“I can’t ask you not to be angry,” she reiterated, now turning around to face him. Up close, she looked worse than he had thought. She didn’t just look starved, but every inch of skin he could see from her thick, buttoned-up shirt was covered in scars.

“But I am asking for your help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your support! Comments and kudos keep me writing at these break-neck speeds. Once again, if you're up for being a beta reading, hit me up. After the new year, I'll come up with a publishing schedule, but for the next few weeks, it's going to be just whenever I have time. I've written 11,000 words thus far, so keep a look out for updates!


	3. For Whom the Trumpets Sound

_“Are you angry?” she asked evenly._

_He had worked at C-Sec. He was an engineer. He solved puzzles for fun, and now the pieces were falling together readily, one right after the other. _

_Between them sat the type of plastic bottle that Chakwas gave out prescription medication in. Shepard had been folding her clothes on her bed when it had rolled onto the floor, and the amiable quiet had become a frozen, deathly silence._

_Shepard hadn’t been sleeping. Her hands had started trembling on and off. She had been eating less. Her heartrate got erratic sometimes. He had thought that last one was just the stress of saving the world. Or maybe a glitch in his visor’s readings. _

_Her voice was so regulated, so careful, but underneath it, Garrus heard fear. _

_“Are you planning to stop?” he asked, moving to pick up the bottle from where it had rolled, near his feet. _

_It was unmarked, and he didn’t need to open it to know that there were stims of some sort or another inside. The Alliance provided them for extended, extreme combat situations, Garrus knew, and what was the the Reaper war but that made a thousand times worse?_

_“When it’s over. Are you angry?” _

_Garrus wasn’t sure why she kept asking that. _

_“Arison…” _

_He was angry at himself, now, because he should have pieced this together far sooner. He should have known there was something happening before it rolled in front of him. He was angry because the most driven woman he knew was having to drug herself to survive the pressure she was pressed under. He wasn’t mad at her, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever been mad at her._

_“I understand if you want to call this off now,” Arison started, her gaze locked onto the opaque bottle, her tone just as tense as before. _

_He noticed that he didn’t specify what “this” was. Their relationship? Their friendship? _

_“What? Arison, no. I’m not angry. I’m not going to break up with you. I just…wish you would have told me. I could have helped you more.”_

_Her ice blue eyes finally slid up to meet his gaze, and for the briefest of moments, he saw not only bone-chilling fear, but also the most visceral pain she had ever expressed before. He had seen her wounded, seen her nearly bleeding out, and she had never looked so tortured._

_“No one can help, Garrus.” _

_“You can—”_

_“What? Talk to someone? What will help is ending the war. That’s it. Then I’ll stop. And until then… just… have my six.”_

_It was supposed to be a statement, but the last segment came out as a question, and Garrus struggled to say anything that could help. As he tried to invent some solution, as he searched for the right words, he slowly and unpleasantly realized that she wasn’t wrong. Commander Shepard needed to be strong. She needed to be available at any time for any emergency. She couldn’t be human, the universe could not afford her breaking._

_“You know I’ll always have your six, Arison. But…” _

_He got to his feet and held out the bottle for her to take back. He did not miss how greedily her eyes followed it. She needed them in more ways than one. _

_“Let me help wherever I can. Whenever. Please. All you need to do is ask.”_

_Arison took the bottle from him and slipped it into her breast pocket. As soon as it was back in her possession, she visibly relaxed and even managed a small smile._

_“Even if it’s two in the morning, and I can’t get coffee machine working?” _

_“As long as you’re making yourself decaf, yeah.” _

“Why me?”

They were the first words to roll off his tongue, and perhaps in another situation, he would have felt bad for being so abrupt. But it was a fair question. There were a number of other whys he wanted to demand answers to as well. Why now was another pressing one, but he suspected the answer would be forthcoming.

“I’m not asking you, because I think you’ll do anything out of some deep, abiding love you’ve kept up for me for five years,” Shepard said coldly. “I’m asking you because this involves a turian.”

“Then rise from the dead again and message the Primarch himself. I’m sure a message from the long-since-declared-dead Commander Shepard will get his attention.”

“This needs to be kept quiet. And no one can know I’m involved.”

“Or that you’re alive?”

“Or that.”

“Why now, Shepard. Did you figure that five years was just a good amount of time to wait before breaking into the home of your…. into my home?”

Shepard brought a hand to her forehead, a gesture which she tried to stop about half-way in. She had never liked seeming weak, and she was betraying the headache that was starting at her temples. Apparently, her trust in Garrus was still strong enough that she decided to rub at her temples despite the fact that she was trying to keep up her strong façade. As if he didn’t know exactly what she was doing, as if he hadn’t seen her use it to scare the shit out of people for years.

“I couldn’t be seen before now,” she offered vaguely, “and I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Shepard. You abandoned me. Whatever happened to, ‘There’s no Shepard without Vakarian’? Go talk to Ash and have fun telling her that while she was giving your eulogy, you were off in a bar somewhere—”

“I understand that you’re angry—”

“Spirits, even Liara could help you. You set her up as Shadow Broker, and she probably already knows you’re alive, doesn’t she?”

“She doesn’t. No one does. And she can’t help. I told you. This involves a turian.”

“So the Shadow Broker doesn’t keep information on turians anymore? How lucky for me.”

“You’re close to the Primarch. You can access information that even Liara doesn’t have.”

“No.”

The word felt wrong. Years ago, he would have insisted there was nothing he would ever refuse when it came to the woman he loved. He followed her into firefight after firefight. He had trusted her in a way he had never trusted anyone before.

She had broken that trust.

He had wanted her back. For five years, he had wished she was miraculously alive somehow, and every corner he turned, he had held out hope that she would be there, leaning against it, waiting for him. He had wanted her back, but not this way.

“I’m not going to help. Get out. Go back to… whatever it was you were doing before you decided to tell me in the worst possible way that you didn’t give a shit about me.”

Shepard did not give a rebuttal, she simply stared unblinkingly into Garrus’ eyes. He wasn’t sure what he expected as a reaction, but it wasn’t her standing as still as a corpse.

“I’ll send you a briefing. If you don’t think it’s important, pretend you never saw me.”

With that, she made her way passed him, moving more slowly than he had expected her to. It only took a few moments before he stopped hearing her footsteps out in the hallway. Before, he had never been able to hear her move. She was an infiltrator through and through. Now, though, even if she carried herself gently, her movements were still audible.

As quickly as it had filled him, the anger in his chest melted away at a nauseating pace.

Garrus brought a hand to the window to steady himself as his legs threatened to give out from sheer exhaustion.

The Presidium below wasn’t the way it had been when he had first seen it as a young, bright-eyed child. Things were almost similar, almost the same, but just different enough to make it all seem fake, like some bad hologram recreation.

Garrus’ hand slid down the glass slowly, and he pulled himself away in order to shut the door which Shepard had left open. He pulled up his omnitool and reset his apartment’s security measures, which had been entirely bypassed, apparently. She had always been a great hacker, and apparently some things didn’t change even when you let everyone who loved think you were dead.

That thought didn’t even get a rise out of him, and it was all Garrus could do to get to his bed before passing out on top of sheets he hadn’t washed in as long as he could remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning to spend 99% of Christmas Eve writing. So maybe three chapters this week, as my gift to you!


	4. The Draw

Garrus sat, a mug of dextro-coffee in his hand, at a pad in one of the embassy’s many meeting rooms. His head throbbed incessantly, and he had almost successfully convinced himself that everything that had happened the night before was just the shittiest nightmare he’d ever had. Maybe it was something he ate. Or something he hadn’t ate. He wasn’t sure he’d had dinner last night.

She had looked so starved.

Garrus took a sip of the coffee and tapped through a couple of news-cycle headlines before he threw himself into another ten hours of signing off on things he was only guessing were good enough. Turians were meant for war, he was realizing more and more with every passing day. Garrus Vakarian, whether as a vigilante or under the title of “Reaper Expert”, had stopped being useful the moment the first celebratory cheers had gone into the air.

He had seventy-two new messages on his private comms system from the advisory board. It was a highly encrypted system, which he’d helped build, partially because he felt responsible for making something Liara couldn’t get easy access to. They may have fought at Shepard’s side together, but that did not mean that he was comfortable letting her just stumble into the Hierarchy’s most classified work as she pleased.

The first twelve messages were from just minutes before. Some were transcripts of meetings which had occurred on Palaven, sent to catch Garrus up. A handful more were legislative proposals, one of which he nixed immediately. He wasn’t a lawyer, but he knew suspiciously broad clauses when he saw them, and that meant that he returned it to the server to be rejected with the concise comment of “too vague” under his reasons for denial.

The message screen was nothing more than a column of words which bled together almost meaninglessly.

_Meeting minutes: cultural preservation committee _

_Meeting minutes: veterans’ affairs committee_

_Meeting minutes: Primarch’s meeting with financial advisory committee_

_Addendum to message 1.75.2: DO NOT HIT REPLY ALL_

_Reply, message 1.75.2: won’t be available_

_Reply, message 1.75.2: can’t make it, reschedule_

_Reply, message 1.75.2: only time that works for me in the next week_

_Reply, message 1.75.2: check if Ternian is available first_

_Reply, message 1.75.2: someone needs to add the financial advisory committee to this thread _

Garrus let out a sigh as he deleted another dozen messages meant to go to the automatic scheduler and not every single person on the mailing list, which included nearly every upper member of the Hierarchy, but in the middle of the mind-numbing thread, there was one subject line which caused him to freeze with his talon over the key which would have deleted it.

_Briefing._

There was no sender, something which he knew shouldn’t have been possible in the system, at least as he had worked it. No sender, though, told him exactly who it was, and guaranteed that whatever had happened the night before wasn’t just some bad dream.

He held his talon still.

He could delete it. Permanently. He could ignore it. He could go back, apparently, to thinking Shepard was dead and that she had cared about him at all, that anything between them had meant anything. It would be easy. It would be so much less painful.

But his finger opened the message before his brain could make any executive decisions.

_Medical facility attacked. Raiders dead. Decrypted credit exchanges. Led back to one Caitus Oremnion. _

Caitus.

Garrus frowned. The name was familiar, so he began to search through the messages he had archived for the name. The first result was a list of members of the financial committee. There were several others attached to the man, most of which were legislative pieces that had his name on them either as a primary writer or a co-creator. None were particularly interesting, either.

She knew how to make him surmise the exact question she was asking without even saying it. She didn’t even sign her damn name. The puzzle was set before him, a couple of pieces missing, but the outline was strange to say the least. What did this apparently-important committee member have to benefit from attacking a medical facility?

Immediately, Garrus found himself considering the options. At worst, there was something going on within the turian government that he didn’t know about, something which had a financial advisor targeting civilians. Best case scenario, the man had something to hide or something to gain from the strangely targeted violence. There was also the possibility that Caitus had been hacked and this was just an issue he was keeping between him and whatever off-world bank he was probably using. Or someone set it up to look like he was sending the credits, opening a fake account with his credentials.

Damn Shepard, she knew exactly how to be so brief it left him asking more questions. What did the facility do? What was its name? How exactly did the raiders die? What sort of decryption had been necessary? The last two Garrus at least had suspicions about. First answer: one shot straight through the eyes before they even spotted her. For the second? It didn’t matter if it was the best encryption money could buy, if Shepard wanted in, she got in. He’d seen her hack things with such ease she made billion-credit firewalls look like a joke when even the most advanced AI would have struggled with them.

Damn her.

Because she knew he cared. Even if he wanted to not care about her, even if he wanted to ignore the pain and pretend nothing had happened, there were civilians involved. He hadn’t become Archangel because he thought it would be fun, he had donned that identity because it protected innocents and provided justice.

And she had always cared, too. That was part of why they had gotten along so well.

Leaving the secure server and opening the extranet, Garrus began to search some terms which he hoped would at least give him some of the information he wanted, so he didn’t have to rely completely on Shepard. If he was going to agree to work with her, he wasn’t about to walk into this giving her more power than she already had.

The issue, Garrus found quickly, was that searching for attacks on medical facilities, even when restricted to recent dates, pulled up so many extraneous results, he could hardly search through them all. The ones that looked even slightly promising didn’t include the keywords “raiders” or “bandits” or anything similar. He did find an interesting article about an attack on a rehab facility on Thessia, but an addendum posted at the end of the article to update it said that the perpetrator was in custody having been located and arrested by a Justicar.

He continued to narrow his search terms, but it wasn’t long before there were simply no results.

Where had Shepard received this information in the first place? She had said she hadn’t been in contact with Liara, and he believed her about that. While Liara and Shepard had gotten along well enough, Shepard had never been particularly close to the asari, especially after Liara took on the mantle of Shadow Broker.

There were too many questions, and she had done that intentionally.

The worst part was that just as well as she knew him, he knew her. He knew that she was desperate if she was willing to ask for help. She hadn’t managed to do it ever before, so what made this unnamed facility so special?

Her bravery and her determination were why he had loved her, once.

Slowly, Garrus lowered the pad in his hand and brought his gaze to the ceiling.

His chest hurt. He had a full-on headache forming now, and all he could think about was how less than twenty-four hours ago, he would have said he loved Arison no matter what. And now she was back, and that was all he would have asked for yesterday morning. If someone had told him he had to press a button and destroy half the galaxy to get Shepard back, he would have done it.

Now?

“Spirits,” he sighed, bringing a hand to his chest, over his heart and rubbing the area mindlessly.

Now, he wanted a drink, and it wasn’t even past eight hours into the morning cycle.

After only a moment’s respite, staring at the lights and letting his mind simply… settle, he returned to the messages on the server. There were ten new messages, most of which were from people who had either missed the request that they not reply all on the automatic scheduling messages or had cavalierly ignored it.

He reopened the message from Shepard and began a reply.

_Shepard, _

And this was all he could manage for several minutes. There was too much he wanted to say, and at the same time, he wanted to say absolutely nothing.

_Shepard, _

_I need more than that._

But he couldn’t make himself send it. He deleted it to try again.

_Shepard,_

_Ask someone else. I’m busy with_

This was when he got the alert for four more messages, all of which were meeting minutes.

Before he knew what he was doing, Garrus had gotten to his feet, put away the pad, and was walking to the exit of the embassy. Hercus was at his desk and did not even notice Garrus’ approach, since he was deeply engrossed reading some article from the extranet. The headline, in all caps, declared that Earth had officially cleaned up the last of the remains of the Reapers in Vancouver.

“Hey.”

Hercus whipped around, nearly hitting his fringe on the back of his chair, and gave an awkward chuckle.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be… I should be working—”

“Do you have any sick leave left?”

The young turian cocked his head to the side slightly, and his subharmonics spoke of confusion when he offered, “Yes…”

“Let’s go get those drinks,” Garrus offered, motioning with one of his fingers toward the exit. “You’re not busy, no one’s going to get passed C-Sec with anything dangerous, and you can just turn on the VI.”

“What about your briefing with the Primarch?”

“Rescheduled. Now do you want to drink or not?”


	5. The Slope Fallacy

_“If this thing goes sideways, and we both end up there… Meet me at the bar. I’m buying.”_

There were four shot glasses which now sat empty in front of him. They were all slightly sticky, and the way they clung to the bar was nearly desperate. Garrus had a hand around one, using it as something just to keep his hands busy.

Beside him, Hercus tossed down another shot.

“Bad morning?” he finally ventured after clearing his throat.

Garrus wasn’t sure what had possessed him to do this, now that he actually sat at the cheapest bar he knew of, the bright-eyed, decorated soldier beside him. He had wanted to drink, but why he had set himself up for this failure, he wasn’t sure.

“Bad everything. You said you wanted to hear war stories. Shoot.”

Garrus heard the words come from his mouth. He didn’t want to say them, really, but he wanted to say them nonetheless. It was the same feeling as picking a scab open or pressing a bruise.

Hercus mused for a moment, looking around as if there was something to inspire him in the already-dark and empty bar they sat in. There were no other patrons, and Garrus was shocked it had even been open. Part of him had already started wondering if it was a front for something else less reputable, so easily falling back into old habits.

“I heard you used to work for C-Sec,” Hercus offered, though it was more of a question than a leading statement, and Garrus had no idea what to do with that.

“It was a long time ago.”

“But that’s how you met the Commander, right? That’s how you got onto her crew?”

“Yeah.”

“You miss her, don’t you?”

“You get a degree in therapy with that medal the Primarch gave you?”

“No, I lost someone, too.”

Garrus frowned and turned so he was actually looking at Hercus now, really looking. He’d seen the man every day for the last year or two, and they’d bantered, but it occurred to him that there was little he actually knew about the turian in front of him. Garrus had long ago stopped noticing the missing fingers on his left hand, and Garrus had secretly hoped that people had stopped noticing the scarring that marred the entire right side of his face.

“Yeah?” Garrus asked slowly.

“Yeah. First, I saw on the vids that the Reapers were attacking where she was stationed. Then they found her body eventually. No one in her platoon survived. Altakiril was a massacre.”

13 million. That was what Garrus remembered hearing. 13 million dead on Altakiril where the Reapers had blasted through and moved on as quickly as they had come. It was a strategic move on their part, taking out the defenses there, but it meant that the turian military lost a lot of technical specialists very early into the war.

Everyone had lost someone.

“What was her name?”

“Juna,” Hercus let out at a sigh. “But she would kick my ass now if she knew I was day drinking and mourning her half a decade later. But you understand…”

Garrus let out a grunt of agreement before flagging down the bartender and ordering two more shots.

“You don’t do much outside of work. If this is out of line, just tell me, but you haven’t moved on either have you?”

“If I ordered you to stop talking, you wouldn’t do it,” Garrus stated, knowing from the intent look in Hercus’ eyes that he had something he wanted to say, and he was going to say it regardless of orders.

“Probably not,” was the quick admission.

The candidness at least brought a bit of a chuckle out Garrus’ mouth. Maybe Hercus wasn’t such a good turian after all, and that only made Garrus like him even more.

“I’ll tell you this,” Garrus ventured as the bartender poured him two more shots. “If she wanted you to move on, do it. Spirits know we need a lot more little turians running around now.”

Because that was what Shepard had expected, wasn’t it? That he would find someone else, but how could she not have known that he wouldn’t move on? Did she think that little of him? Did she just not care?

Frustrated at his own questions, and before Hercus could express either confusion or indignation, Garrus tossed back the first of the two new shots. It burned less now than the shots before had, and he definitely was finding that it was easier to not think or worry, which was exactly what he had been wanting out of this. Not the attempted group therapy he was getting, but at least he wasn’t drinking alone. 

“Is that your stance or something you’d have the Hierarchy put out on vids?”

“You wanted to talk war stories, Hercus, so how about this. One for one. You answer a question I have, I answer a question you have.”

“You’re on, Advisor Vakarian.”

Garrus grabbed his last shot, trying to think of something interesting.

“Your fingers. How’d you lose them?”

Hercus held up his left hand, where his far left and middle finger were gone, down to where they would have met his hand. The skin around it was untouched short of where the scarred, healed flesh was.

“I was fighting a banshee with my squad. She took down five of us before she got to me, and I got my commander out of her way when she went to grab him. Those claws are sharp as hell, took the fingers straight off. I didn’t even feel it at first. And at that point, she was close enough to our heavier firepower that we managed to take her out. I got the last shot in, so everyone gave me the kill, but I really didn’t do much.”

Garrus remembered the husks, every form of them, with revulsion now. Their glowing eyes had been bad enough at the start, but by the time they weren’t just human-based anymore, it had hit him harder. Shepard had been upset by them, but he hadn’t truly understood her horror until he saw a marauder. It was the form of his people, corrupted in the most unnatural of ways. Only then had he understood why Shepard had so many nightmares about husks. Only then did he understand why she couldn’t stand to look at them.

“A banshee is an impressive kill. And you saved your commander.”

“For the time being. He died a week later. I couldn’t jump between him and his own gun.”

Silence settled for a moment while Hercus looked down at the empty shot glasses with a forlorn expression. Finally, though, he realized it was his turn for a question, and he found his footing in the conversation again.

“What’s the last happy memory you have?”

“Not pulling punches,” Garrus commented, though this was an attempt to buy himself time. He was going to answer the question, he owed Hercus that, but the worst part was that he only knew one thing immediately: the last happy memory he had was more than five years old.

“It was here,” he finally ventured after thinking.

“In this bar?” was the amused response.

“No, the Citadel. Commander Shepard and I had a shooting competition. She let me win.”

“Let you? I heard you were the best shot in the turian military.”

“Yeah, and she was the best in the galaxy. I saw her take shots that I would never even have dreamed of trying, and she almost never missed. One shot, one kill was her policy. It was a good one, until the end, I guess.”

“I never would have thought it would be a human to save our skins,” Hercus mused. “No offense intended. Just, they weren’t even a council race until the Commander proved what they were capable of.”

Garrus held a hand up to keep Hercus from stumbling onward, because he wasn’t offended. He understood. When he had first met Shepard, he had heard what she was capable of, but he had had to see it himself to really believe it. The woman hadn’t even been able to die. Twice.

“It took seeing to believe,” Garrus offered.

“I saw vids of you two fighting on Earth. Right before… the war ended. Now they use that footage for combat training, I heard.”

The final charge toward the Crucible. Garrus remembered it so vividly. He had been asked his permission years ago for that footage to be used for educational purposes, since the Commander wasn’t alive to grant it, and Tali had already okayed it.

He had watched it, too. He had it uploaded to his visor and played it back sometimes. He had been glad at least some part of Shepard’s raw intensity had survived. There were several angles where he could see her grey-blue eyes lock onto a target right before she pulled her trigger, and he had committed each of those to memory.

“She…”

Garrus wanted to say something about her. He almost found himself using the present tense, but he couldn’t. If anything, Shepard had died in ending the war, because the woman he met last night wasn’t the same person. He wasn’t lying if he talked about her like she was dead, because she was, he was coming to realize. Only there was no corpse, just someone else in her body. Someone who had been content to let him and all of their friends suffer without her.

“She was a good soldier.”

“Your turn,” Hercus reminded.

His subvocals spoke of sympathy, since he was probably imagining at least part of what Garrus was thinking.

“How about a hypothetical instead?”

“Shoot.”

“You’re a good soldier. You were wounded trying to defend your CO. Adrien gave you a medal for that and got you placed on the Citadel where one day, you’re going to be an ambassador. A good soldier obeys orders and listens to his superiors, and evidently, you’re the perfect example. So, what would you do if you suspected someone above you of being involved in something they shouldn’t be?”

Hercus wasn’t an idiot. Garrus knew that the moment he posited this hypothetical, Hercus would know that it wasn’t just some nebulous question posed for fun. But Garrus was drunk. And the questions Shepard hadn’t posed in her message were weighing on him.

“Someone above me? How so?”

“Diagonally, not directly. Someone you don’t know personally.”

“Something they shouldn’t be?”

“At best, he’s the victim of…. some sort of identity fraud. At worst, he’s got a hand in the deaths of civilians.”

Hercus nodded thoughtfully, and Garrus was relieved that his question was being seriously considered. Some part of him had hoped that the good soldier would have a knee-jerk reaction to say it should all be let go. Or to let someone higher up handle it. Instead, Hercus motioned the bartender over and asked for some water before answering.

“At best,” Hercus offered slowly, “you would be doing this person a favor figuring out what’s going on. To clear their name. At worst… Well, you have the ear of the Primarch and a Spectre, don’t you?”

Why hadn’t Shepard gone to Ash? Spectre status allowed Ashley to do things that even Garrus wasn’t going to be able to with his connections. And despite the fact that Ash had matured a lot since they’d first partnered up on the Normandy SR-1, she still was slow to trust other species. Ash wouldn’t need convincing to investigate a possibly-corrupt turian official, and it wouldn’t affect her job the way it would Garrus’. This sort of thing was basically in her job description, looking for corruption.

“I’m also supposed to be advising said Primarch,” Garrus reminded. “If I was to investigate this, I would have to leave the Citadel and maybe do some things an advisor probably shouldn’t be doing.”

“Do you want my honest opinion?” Hercus asked as he was given a glass of water by the bartender.

“No, I want you to tell me to mind my business, so I don’t do something I’m going to regret,” Garrus admitted.

Hercus paused, but it was clear it was only because he was trying to figure out how to turn Garrus’ statement into something that could be bantered with.

“Then mind your own business. But I think you want to check this out, and if you’re suspicious, whatever’s happening probably isn’t good. And I also want to guess that part of the reason you want to do this is because—”

“Because it’s what Shepard would want. I know. That’s the problem.”

Hercus gave Garrus a bit of a puzzled look, betraying that that was not what he was going to say, but it only took him a moment to reconsider and roll with the information Garrus had given him.

“She saved the galaxy. If it’s what she would have wanted, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to check out.”

“Shit,” Garrus sighed, putting a hand on his forehead. Hercus was right. Whatever was going on wasn’t really about Shepard, or she wouldn’t have showed up. She never did anything for herself.

“You’re just trying to get me fired, so you can have my job,” Garrus accused half-heartedly as he began to transfer the credits to the bar for both of their drinks from his omnitool.

“Your job sounds awful. I’m not interested,” Hercus offered at a laugh. “Like you said, I’m too young to be spending my whole life at work.”

“If I knew anything about architecture, it would be a lot better.”

“I studied architecture,” Hercus admitted slyly.

“Then when I’m exiled from turian space, you can have the damn thing. Have fun spending all night looking at city plans.”

With that, Garrus got up from his seat, a bit too quickly in fact, and began to walk out of the bar. This left Hercus sitting where he had been, slightly perplexed, but before Garrus could leave, he called out,

“Be careful with yourself, Garrus!”

“That’s Advisor Vakarian to you,” Garrus bantered back before leaving the nice, dim atmosphere of the bar and walking into the far-too-bright lights of the peak of the day cycle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this project is officially at 20k! If anyone wants to beta, it will absolutely speed up the posting rate. Also, sorry for the weird formatting, Archive isn't letting me indent, so I've been having to do some sort of hacky stuff to get this readable.


	6. Call and Response, the Traditional Form

_Fine._

That was the extent of the first message which Garrus sent off. It was simple, but it got a number of things across. First of all, he wasn’t outing Shepard by naming her in the message, so even if he was hacked, she would remain undiscovered. Second of all, he made it clear that he was not excited about this, because he wasn’t. He was going to do the right thing, but not for the reason Shepard probably expected. She had betrayed his trust, and that still hurt. He was going to do exactly what he had on Omega as Archangel: fight for what was right because someone needed to keep others safe.

The second message Garrus sent was a bit longer.

_Adrien,_

_I know this is abrupt, but for personal reasons, I need to step down as your advisor. Hopefully temporarily, but I’m not sure._

_Garrus Vakarian_

With those sent, Garrus found himself standing in front of the junkyard that was his apartment, not even sure what to do with himself. He needed to pack something, probably, but what? Was Shepard planning on going in guns blazing, not bothering to ask questions? It wasn’t her style, sure, but she’d been known to do that on occasion if she felt it was necessary. Was she trying to hide both of their identities? If that was the case, they were “shit out of luck” as Joker would have said. She looked different, older and less healthy, and apparently no one had recognized her yet for whatever reason, maybe because everyone had believed it when they had been told Shepard, the hero of the galaxy, was dead. What was a little more conspicuous was Garrus’ scarring, penchant for heavily modded sniper rifles, and tendency to wear his visor even long after he’d stopped seeing active combat.

As he stood, paralyzed by the sheer amount of mess in his apartment, he took a moment to get his thoughts in any sort of order. He shouldn’t be brought to a stand-still by something this small. Why had he suddenly now found himself unable to just throw some necessities together? It wasn’t like he needed a lot. Back during the war, he would have been happy enough with dextro-rations, his rifle, his armor, and Shepard calling the shots at his side.

But that was where the issue was, he realized. He didn’t know exactly what Shepard wanted, so he couldn’t prepare for her eventualities, and that was slowing him to a stop. It only took a small pulse of anger to break through his paralysis. Shepard didn’t deserve his trust anymore, so he could do and bring whatever he felt was necessary, her uncommunicated plans be damned.

So Garrus began to pack whatever he felt he needed. Including the Widow, which had sat gathering dust on a workbench in the back of his small apartment. He still had his armor, the set he wore during the final push against the Reapers. He hadn’t had the heart to have it repainted, so there were still a number of scratches and dents which pockmarked silver across the blue paint.

It had sat in his closet for years, lying amongst piles of things he had tried to forget about but hadn’t been able to get rid of, and before he could actually haul it into a pack, his omnitool pinged with three consecutive messages, all from the private server.

The first was untitled with no sender, so Garrus wasn’t shocked to see it simply read:

_Meet me at the bar you left this morning._

Of course she’d been watching him, he thought angrily. How long had she been watching him?

Before he could ponder that, he noticed that the next message was from the Primarch.

_Garrus, if you’re going to quit, do it in person._

And then the final message was from the automatic scheduler, telling him that he had an appointment scheduled with the Primarch in Vallum in two days at 0800.

Garrus let out strangled sigh.

Adrien and Shepard had a lot in common; he had found that out when they were both on the same ship at the same time saying the same things often to each other. So Garrus realized he shouldn’t have been shocked to know that they would both reply to his messages at nearly the same time and with the same degree of unhelpfulness.

There had been this question wandering around his head, or rather several of them which were all variations on a theme. Shepard had countless powerful people who loved her or at least held her in high respect. Why turn to him? Ash was a Spectre, Liara was the Shadow Broker. Tali was an admiral. Samara was a Justicar. Hell, had she gone straight to the Primarch on her own, Garrus was sure she would have gotten whatever information she was after. So why him?

Garrus replied a confirmation to the automatic scheduler before looking up a schedule of ships going off the Citadel in the next twelve hours. As an ambassador, he could get onto any major liner for travel no issue, and fortunately, there were three headed in the right direction. The first left in an hour, but the next two were a few hours away, which would give him time to meet with Shepard.

Once he had booked his spot on the second of the three liners, which was a mercantile cruiser accepting passengers who had enough credits, he paused his haphazard packing to meet with Shepard find out whatever it was she was going to ask of him, exactly. Her crusade would have to wait until he met with the Primarch, and he would stand his ground on that. He respected Adrien, and while not exactly the most politically adept himself, Garrus knew better than to burn bridges prematurely. Besides, he didn’t see a situation in which Adrien didn’t let him take some time off. He wasn’t sure when the last time he had taken a day to himself was, but he was pretty sure there hadn’t been more than four since he started as an advisor.

The bar was much busier, now that it was after most of the Citadel had gotten off the day shifts, and outside the entrance, Garrus caught sight of Shepard leaning up against the exterior wall. It looked nonchalant, her stance, with one leg up against the wall her back was to, but even from the distance he was at, he could tell her balance was off. No one seemed to be paying her much attention, however, and it was now that he understood why she had passed years without anyone recognizing her: she had her hair down, which rendered her completely unlike any photos or vids anyone had ever seen of her. Hell, he had only seen her with her hair down once or twice, and that had been with no one else around.

When he got close enough, she nodded to him. Not a wave, not a smile. Just a nod to acknowledge him.

If he had meant nothing to her, then damn it, he was going to return the favor.

“You have ten minutes to tell me more about what’s happening, or I walk,” was the stilted ultimatum he managed. Never before had he truly given her orders or drawn a line in the sand with her.

But things had changed. He wasn’t going to be jerked around again.

Shepard gave him a look which he wasn’t sure how to interpret. It was almost confusion, almost pain, but it flitted away too quickly for him to figure out the exact nature of it.

“What more do you want to know?”

What kind of question was that?

“Briefings usually involve locations. Dates. Plans. You didn’t give me anything. I’m not going into this blindly. Either you convince me to help, or I walk.”

Shepard seemed to think about this for a moment before slowly nodding her head.

“We can get a table and talk,” she conceded. Garrus briefly thought of disagreeing, solely because a shitty bar was probably the worst place to start talking about anything even vaguely bordering on classified, but where else would they talk? He was not about to let her back into his apartment, and even if the turian embassy was safe in some ways, there was security footage taken from just about every angle and bringing a human in would surely blow any cover Shepard had.

Garrus gave a nod, and she led the way in. Once inside, it was evident that she had done some reconnaissance of the location before inviting him in. She led them to the furthest corner, which was located not only such that they could see the front door, but also where no one was willing to sit nearby, since the often-opening door to the kitchen and the bright light shining from it evidently was a mood killer for anyone wanting to get drunk or dance.

The first odd thing Garrus noticed was the way Shepard’s hand grasped the seat before she made any attempt to sit. Her knuckles clenched the back of it till they were white before she slowly eased herself into the chair. Anyone else might have thought she simply was hesitant about the location, but he saw small tremors wrack through her fingers, and without thinking, he pulled up the vitals scanner on his visor.

“A week ago, a medical station in the Arcturus system was attacked by a group of surprisingly well-armed raiders. Their goal was a set of files, evidently, which they managed to upload to a server before stopped. They also deleted the information they had taken from the station’s records, and no one had been able to find out exactly what was taken. It’s something old, as far as anyone can tell, since they haven’t found anything missing on current patients.”

By the time she had finished her explanation, the vitals scans were finally giving Garrus some consistent readings. First of all, her pupils were contacted far more than Garrus had ever seen them, and he could tell that even without a scanner. What he did get from his tech, however, confused him: her breathing rate was very slow, which was not something normal for her. If anything, her stim abuse had made her prone to a faster pulse and faster respirator rate.

“What are you confused about?” she asked before Garrus could process what she had said before.

“What are you on?” he demanded in return.

“I was telling you the details you wanted, so you wouldn’t walk,” Shepard said, agitated. “Were you not listening?”

“No, not ‘what are you on about?’. What are you on? What are you taking?”

She had been using stims for almost as long as Garrus had known her. He had grown accustomed to her constant and frenetic pace, and this slowness he had been seeing to her actions told him that she had swung the opposite direction in terms of her drug use.

Her blue eyes narrowed slightly.

“They’re prescribed, Vakarian. Mind your own business. It’s between me and my doctor.”

Shit, the use of his last name hurt far more than he would have expected. She had called him by his first name the other night, and she had been so… tender about it. Now not only was he just his last name to her, but she made it clear he wasn’t invited into her private life anymore. It stung like a raw fucking knife wound.

“And let me guess, your doctor is on that station?” he ventured.

He should leave. He should go back to living his life, only now with closure. Shepard had never given a shit about him, evidently, and even if she had, she had been happy to let him suffer. He should tell her to get the hell out of his life, tell her how much she had hurt him, and leave. He should message Adrien back and tell him he had reconsidered.

“No,” she countered sharply. “Something bad is going on. I sent you the name. He’s connected to this somehow. I can’t access everything on my own, I need someone to help.”

“You need someone who’s willing to compromise the security of the turian government. You came to the wrong person.” He almost couldn’t believe what he was saying, but the words were coming out, nonetheless. While at first, his subvocals were rumbling with anger, by the end, he had risen to his feet as a clearer cross-species communication of his emotional state.

He wasn’t mad. He was furious. She only asked for him, only revealed herself, because he had information. She hadn’t come back to apologize for being gone for so long, for lying. He would have forgiven her, if she had. If her first words to him in half a decade had been, “I fucked up, Garrus” and not some comment on the mess that his life was, he would have melted.

He had missed her more than he could even describe.

And now he was furious.

“Ask someone else. Literally anyone else,” he spat.

And in that moment, he saw the stoic expression Shepard had been keeping up so steadily drop slightly. It was the first sign that she was human, really. He saw pain in her eyes.

“I need you,” she said slowly, her tone bordering on pleading.

“No. You need my position. If you had needed me… If you had cared about me, we wouldn’t have met again like this.”

He had no plans beyond turning around and not even glancing back. She didn’t need him, and he wouldn’t be used, but before he could pull away entirely, her hand darted out, a movement almost as quick as she had been able to make back when she took stims. Her small, strange, five-fingered hand grabbed his wrist before he could pull away, and, barely above a whisper, Arison spoke, her ice-blue eyes locked on his.

“They killed kids, Garrus.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm messing around with some workskin business to see if I can put out chapters without the weird indentation issues. If something looks wonky, let me know. I'm not a computer person, and if my printer from 2004 makes a weird noise, I shoot it with a wheellock pistol, so this is... ah.... frustrating.


	7. The Littlest Among Them

_ Garrus was woken by something he had become accustomed to by now, the movement of someone bolting upright beside him. His arm had been across Shepard’s shoulders during the night, and now he snaked up his hand, which had been tossed off of her, to gently rest on her upper arm. _

_ “What was it this time?” he asked softly as he tried to coax his eyes into staying open. _

_ “Go back to sleep,” Arison encouraged at a whisper. _

_ She slipped out from underneath his hand and off of the bed, immediately making her way towards her uniform, which she had folded pristinely beside the couch. Before she could get there, though, Garrus sat up and gestured back towards the bed. _

_ “If you’re awake, I’m awake. What was it?” _

_ Arison paused, her hand still outstretched to grab her sports bra from where it had been placed atop her unwrinkled, regulation-folded clothes. _

_ “You need to sleep,” she tried to argue. _

_ “Well, we’re both not sleeping now. What time is it?” _

_ “0300.” _

_ “Perfect, so we have two more hours to just lay here and talk and—” _

_ Arison let out a small sigh and made her way back to the bed. Her hair was down, so Garrus gently brought one of his talons across her forehead to move some strands from her face. She leaned into the touch, her exhaustion so painfully obvious. She let no one but Garrus see how tired she was, that was what the stims were for. _

_ “That boy. The one back on Earth.” _

_ Garrus could see that she had been sweating from the nightmare. She woke up like this almost every night, and had once mentioned the phrase night-terrors, which seemed far more accurate to the fear he would see in her eyes when she awoke than nightmares. _

_ “I saw him burning alive. And he was begging for me to save him, and he was… telling me of all the times I had failed, when I couldn’t... Mordin… Kaiden… Mo—” _

_ She cut herself off with a violence. _

_ “Your mother?” Garrus asked gently. _

_ Arison had shut her eyes, but he could tell that it was only in an attempt to keep from crying. She hated crying. _

_ “It was just a nightmare,” she murmured. “You should go back to sleep. I’m sure at least someone on the crew is having a hard time sleeping, I’ll keep them company until everyone is up. Then we’re going to the Citadel to restock. Hackett’s orders.” _

_ At that, she pulled away and began to knot her hair into her normal bun. It was almost fascinating to watch as she pulled her air of command back around her. The moment she put on her uniform, the moment she pulled her hair back, she wasn’t allowed to fear. She was confident, brilliant, and dedicated, with no signs of fracturing at all. _

_ “Get some rest, Garrus,” she _ _ ordered fondly before turning to leave her cabin. _

_ Garrus did not shut his eyes immediately, and that meant that he got to see her dry-swallowing two stims which she had set on her desk before leaving her cabin._

In her eyes, Garrus saw the pain which Commander Shepard tried so hard to suppress, which she succeeded in suppressing in front of everyone else. He had been ready to turn his back on Commander Shepard, but in those eyes now he saw some fragment of Arison. 

Her words echoed in his mind, as seconds passed, as her hand did not release him. 

It was the first time they had touched in five years, and some part of Garrus wanted nothing less than to break the contact. Another part of him wanted nothing more.

He dropped his gaze from her face to her hand. 

It was mottled in white and pink scars, some of which he recognized, some of which he didn’t. The hand clutched to him with a desperation which her face did not betray, perhaps could not betray. There were other times she had clutched to him, times when he had been positive he was in love, that he had found the person he would spend the rest of his life with.

He had loved her.

Fuck.

“If I help you,” Garrus finally began, still standing and half-caught, “it will be because I don’t like what I’m seeing about the situation, not because I trust you to lead me into this.” 

Shepard relaxed her death-grip on his wrist and gave a wary nod.

“If I help you, I need to meet with the Primarch about quitting the job he gave me. Then, what?”

“Then you meet me at Havenwood, and we figure out what files were taken. How is Adrien?” she ventured.

“Ask him yourself if you care,” Garrus sniped back.

The moment the words left him, he knew it was projection and nothing more. He wished she had asked that about him, and he wanted her to know that. She hadn’t asked. She had expected.

Shepard’s lips twisted into a frown, and she pulled her hand back slowly. 

“Will you help, then?” 

Garrus let out something which was a cross between a strangled sigh and hiss. 

He wanted to tell her no, to double down and force her to reach out to someone she wanted to see even less than she had wanted to see him. But he had left C-Sec, because he had had suspicions, and he’d been right about them. He became Archangel, because that gave him a way to fix Omega. Something in him desperately wanted to right wrongs, and that was an impulse he had shared with Shepard. She hadn’t respected him truly until she found him on Omega, ready to die. She had never said it, but he had seen it in her eyes. When they had first met, she looked at him like an idealistic kid, and that day on Omega had changed her view for some reason, though Garrus wasn’t sure why. 

“Yeah. I’ll help.”

He wanted to add stipulations. To say that they would be equals, that she would have to tell him everything up front, but something told him that while he could get that agreement from Shepard, it would only hurt her. She was hiding something behind her vagaries and façade and trying to rip the truth out of her would only hurt her more. 

He was furious, but he knew her pain wouldn’t bring him any satisfaction. He had loved her, and there was a time he had known, at least in part, the sort of horrors that she had seen. He had seen a lot in his time, but it had nothing on what Arison had witnessed, he knew instinctively, despite the fact that she had never put words to her experiences. 

“Thank you,” she said, and it was evident from her tone that this was genuine. She truly needed him for whatever reason, and that only made Garrus more uncomfortable with the situation. 

“My meeting with the Primarch is in two days. I’m heading out today. What should I bring?”

“Your armor and your Widow, assuming you haven’t gotten rusty,” she tried to tease.

“Fine,” he said, instead of immediately going on the defensive, like he wanted to. She was correct in one way, he hadn’t touched the thing in some time, and he hadn’t practiced in at least a year, but who was she to judge? She was the reason for it. She didn’t exactly look as though she could handle her rifle anymore, either, but he held his tongue. He would figure out whatever was going on, and then he was going to leave the whole situation behind.

“I’ll see you in three days, then?” she asked. It was more of a statement than a question, really, a reassurance that she wanted for whatever reason.

“Assuming Adrien allows me to step down, yes.” 

Shepard nodded her head and settled her hands onto the table, straightening her back, as if she could hide the desperation she had betrayed. She looked as though she wanted to say something, but whatever words she was thinking did not make it passed her lips.

He didn’t know what to say, either. He wanted to say a lot of things. He wanted to tell her that had she come back in literally any other way, he would still have loved her. He wanted to reiterate that he wasn’t doing this for her. He wanted a lot of things, but he settled for just turning around and leaving without a second glance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got sucked into replaying ME3 to recall canon better, so I didn't get much writing done this week, but I still think I'll be able to update at the current rate (twice a week). If you like what you've read, please comment or kudos, because every email I get from AO3 boosts my absolutely mediocre self-esteem by three points.


	8. Brothers in Arms

Garrus had seen the vids of Taetrus, the ones the Reapers had broadcasted as part of their uncanny ability to wage psychological warfare as if they were organics. It had been the home of separatist movements and civil wars previously, and it was one of the first places in the Reaper war to become nearly worthless economically, statistically, and militarily. It had been ravaged, and what was left was being reconstructed based on plans which Garrus had apparently given his seal of approval at some point.

The ship he had chartered, from a company titled “Triple R”, was owned by an enterprising volus who had created a very profitable business employing scavengers to take apart entirely abandoned and decimated parts of planets and then selling the scavenged supplies at a reasonable rate to any number of local and galactic governments. This meant that the whole ride, Garrus wasn’t having to deal with other people so much as trying to keep himself from inspecting what exactly the ship had in its hold. The manifests stated the ship was carrying a lot of refurbished tech, brought up to snuff by some of the volus’ quarian employees. There were some raw materials aboard, too, even some eezo, if the manifest was to be believed.

He had spent so long on the Normandy, though, that he could not help himself from helping himself to one of the nav computers when none of the crew was paying attention.

He found little of use, other than that the ship made a frankly astronomical number of trips, many to and from places Garrus knew had been completely obliterated.

He wasn’t sure whether he hated the company for “salvaging” things from people the Reapers had murdered or whether he appreciated the fact that governments were apparently given a pretty steep discount for purchasing in bulk. This shipment was ordered in the name turian Hierarchy with the bill also being footed by the Hierarchy.

Why Adrien was here, Garrus wasn’t sure. Perhaps, because Adrien had been on Taetrus before, then with a different title, so he knew the terrain well enough to assist in the location’s recovery. Perhaps there was something going on in the area that required the attention of the Primarch specifically, though Garrus could not imagine what exactly that would have been, particularly as he stepped off the ship and his eyes settled on the capital city, or what was left of it.

He felt his shoulders drop forward slightly.

It was one thing to see the vids in the heat of war, with Shepard next to him, her face steely, a hand on his shoulder to ground him. It was something entirely different to see that even after five years, the place still looked like a warzone. How many generations would it take to stabilize, not even just in terms of numbers, but in terms of strength and safety?

“Advisor Vakarian,” a grizzled turian with red clan markings addressed from a bit further down the landing platform.

Garrus was not sure where he ranked, really, compared to anyone anymore. There was the Hierarchy, but as far as whether or not he should salute, Garrus had no idea what was expected. He settled for a deep nod, and this was returned.

“General Ternian,” she offered. “We’ve never met, but I had the pleasure of watching some combat vids of you during the war, with Commander Shepard. Adrien speaks highly of you, as well.”

It took a moment, but Garrus finally recalled why her name was familiar.

“You helped head the defense of Palaven,” he recalled.

“Hm,” she grunted, the expression of almost smug pride in Garrus’ representation of their species dropping to something a bit darker. “For all the good I did. Fifty thousand turians die under my command, and I get the Primarch’s commendations and a seat on the financial committee.”

“It would have been more if you hadn’t been there, General,” Garrus insisted out of reflex.

The last thing the survivors needed was more guilt. Besides, he doubted that Adrien would let someone incompetent into his trust. This thought was bitterly reconsidered, however, when Garrus recalled that the plans for Taetrus’ capital’s restructuring had passed his “standards” for any developmental proposals, and he remembered nothing about them at all.

“You sound like Adrien,” Ternian dismissed out of hand.

It was only now after looking at her for a few moments that Garrus saw that there were burn marks dotting their way from the general’s mandibles, cutting through her clan markings, down to her cowl. They mottled and warped the sensitive skin with a vengeance, and the right side of Garrus’ face throbbed in sympathy.

“Your meeting with him is in twenty minutes,” the general stated, turning to face further into the city. As Garrus fell into step beside her, she continued, “He’s in a good mood. It would make us all happy if you hadn’t come all the way from Council space to ruin that.”

“It’s not political,” Garrus half-lied. “It’s personal.”

This was an extremely human sentiment, he realized the moment his words settled into the air. Every good turian was supposed to be service-oriented, putting the greater good above themselves.

He wasn’t a good turian.

Rather than saying something scathing, which was what Garrus expected, Ternian gave a small nod.

“I haven’t seen my wife in a year and a half,” she admitted, looking steely-eyed ahead of them. At first, Garrus thought this was some back-handed way of proving that she was more dedicated than him, at least until she gave a small sigh.

“You can’t burn out now. All the galaxy knows the name Garrus Vakarian, and when they think of turians, they think of you. We can’t have you losing it now.”

“How did you know what the meeting is about?”

“Because Adrien was pissed you sent him a resignation email and made a frustrated comment about you being too much of a coward to quit in person, right before you confirmed the appointment.”

Garrus gave a grunt which was very nearly a laugh.

The rest of the walk through the fallen city was silent, short of Ternian occasionally pointing out something about the construction around them. It was evident after a while that she was simply repeating rote what she had read from the restructuring contracts, but Garrus couldn’t blame her. She was a war-time genius, not cut of the right cloth to ever be running civilian projects comfortably.

Finally, Ternian brought him into one of the larger buildings which was at least externally returned to some of its previous glory, though with Taetrus having the seen the amount of volatility it had even before the war, the place was not particularly grand.

Once inside, Ternian gestured to a large closed door.

“You’re scheduled for ten minutes, and after you, it’s a hanar ambassador for an hour. So if you run over, I don’t think Adrien will be particularly upset.”

“It won’t take ten minutes—” Garrus was about to contest, but the general pointed to the door.

“It’s 0800.”

The general nearly looked amused at Garrus’ strangled expression as he made his way to the office. Garrus had been busy thinking about literally anything other than what was going on, and he was realizing now that he really had no idea what he was going to tell Adrien. Lying was going to be necessary, at least in part, but what was convincing enough without being worrying? He couldn’t use his family. The moment Adrien sent a concerned message to Garrus’ father would be the moment that ship sunk.

Garrus opened the door to find Adrien standing, looking at a massive screen on the wall.

Before him was the selfsame vid Garrus remembered seeing all those years ago from the Reapers. Vallum was littered with bodies and rubble, and before the recording of the carnage stood the Primarch, his hands behind his back.

Garrus walked over to examine whatever it was Adrien was going over from the paused frame that sat on the wall.

“There,” Adrien said, gesturing with one talloned finger at the bottom left of the screen. “Do you see it?”

The screen, while state of the art, was playing footage which had not been intended for close viewing, that much was obvious. What could be made out was mostly just a crumpled wall on top of which a turian soldier was sprawled. Once Garrus used his visor to zoom in further, though, as the image stabilized, Garrus could make out some of the clan markings on the body.

“I believe that’s General Alenion. We had declared him MIA, when we heard that Taetrus had fallen, and we still haven’t found his body.”

Garrus wasn’t sure what this was supposed to lead into. Adrien wasn’t a politician; he had said that from the moment he had fallen upon the sword that was the title of Primarch. He didn’t waste time with metaphors or preludes, even if he had settled into his position with impressive success in the intervening years.

“Has someone claimed to be him?” Garrus ventured a guess.

“No,” Adrien said, finally turning to Garrus. “It’s just something that’s been bothering me. A personal project. He served with my father.”

“I’m sorry,” Garrus offered.

Adrien was looking at Garrus intently for a moment, as if he expected a specific response, but when Garrus failed to provide whatever it was the Primarch had been looking for, Adrien continued.

“Don’t be. He died bravely.”

Garrus remembered Tarquin’s death, which if nothing else was at least admirable. Tarquin had shared a lot of features with his father, if not the strategic mind, and when Shepard had broken the news to him, Adrien had performed like the perfect turian. His child had died for the greater good, which left Adrien a proud, if not a son-less, father.

“General Ternian said I have ten minutes,” Garrus prompted. “What did you want to see me for?”

Adrien’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Did you quit C-Sec with an email?”

Garrus opened his mouth to betray that quitting would be a generous term for what had occurred those years ago, but Adrien cut him off.

“Your father is alright, as is your sister.”

“It’s not about my family,” Garrus explained stiltedly. His family really had been his back-up lie, if he hadn’t managed to come up with something more convincing and less likely to backfire, so now he was running entirely on improv, which was absolutely not the situation he wanted to be in.

Adrien simply stared, his hands returning slowly to parade rest.

“It’s…”

The screen beside them was still paused on the horror that was the war. Garrus found that his eyes wanted to dart back to it, to look at it even if it would hurt him. There were at least two dozen corpses pixilated in death just feet from him, and each of them had had families and friends and stories and futures.

Some fractured part of Garrus wished he had been one of those corpses.

“It’s a personal project,” he managed despite his eyes slowly dragging back to the perhaps-identified corpse.

Even with the analyzation tech he had programmed into his visor’s functionality, there was little he could really make out about the scene. The body in the original footage hadn’t been more than a handful of pixels, and even with auto-corrective software to fill out the areas between squares, nothing was particularly identifying.

And a body found after five years would probably only be identified by either the armor it was in or its tags.

Garrus expected a refusal.

He was hoping for a refusal.

“I took the liberty of checking your Citadel records, and as far as I can tell, you have forty-seven days of accumulated time off. It would have been preferable for you to have taken them several days at a time, I suppose, but now is as good a time as any.”

“Adrien…”

“I’m not letting you quit until you’re willing to tell me what’s going on. If you don’t intend to tell me, which I know you don’t, then you can either disappear for a time during which I will be forced to declare you a missing person, or you take some of your spirits-damned PTO. Now which are you going to do?”

Garrus wrenched his eyes from the screen to meet Adrien’s piercing gaze.

“I shouldn’t do this,” Garrus admitted.

“What makes you say that?” was the quick return.

Evidently, Adrien had more faith in Garrus than even Garrus had in himself.

“If my… hunch is right, things could be destabilized,” he offered, trying to remain as vague as possible while still sharing his exact fears.

“Look around you, Garrus. Short of assassinating every current, living ruler of every galactic government, things could hardly get less stable. No one knows how things are going to get fixed, least of all me. Every government I’ve worked with is splintered, and most of us don’t know where to even begin with this mess. Everyone is going into debt for the restructuring, and none of us know how we’re going to pay it off. Soon, once people feel safe enough on their own planets, colonization rights are going to come into question. Those who aren’t prepared to defend their colonies are going to lose their off-world resources. And then, it’s going to turn to combat.”

Adrien was no politician, but he was a career soldier, had been a successful general, and as he laid out this series of events, Garrus found his heart sinking. No peace was forever, and the Reaper war had created more power vacuums across the galaxy than there had been in centuries. Sooner or later, enterprising individuals were going to try to take power where they could, and the turians needed to be ready for it. This at least explained why the Primarch was on Taetrus rather than Palaven or another, more stable planet.

“Were you trying to dissuade me from leaving? Because if so, you’ve succeeded.”

“I was trying to give you perspective. In the broadest way possible, could you tell me what exactly you think you might be destabilizing?”

Garrus trusted Adrien, but he found that he still couldn’t tell the Primarch the full truth. It was not that he thought Adrien was embroiled in some political scandal, that was far from it. The issue was that he could still see the look in Shepard’s eyes as she finally admitted why she had a vested interest in the investigation she had started.

“An important turian official may have done something,” was what Garrus settled on saying.

“And you trust your source?” Adrien asked evenly.

Garrus was positive that his hesitation in answering was not missed.

“I’ll have to see for myself.”

A sharp knocking resonated from the door, and Garrus noted that it was now 0817.

“So, should I start filing that missing persons report now?”

“No,” Garrus promised. “And I’ll keep you apprised before anything breaks. If anything breaks.”

“That’s all I could ask for. You’ve done well for us, Garrus. I trust you not to do anything you’ll regret,” were Adrien’s parting words before the door slid open and Garrus walked out, unsure of what exactly had just transpired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite youtube series just had all of its artists fired, so I'm depressed as fuck! Please enjoy some depressed people politicking on the house.


	9. Faith in the Faithless

As Garrus made his way out of the room, he only vaguely recognized that he was passing the hanar ambassador and General Ternian. He walked numbly out the front door, but even as he reached sunlight, he was still seeing the paused vid frame with all its grainy horror, even as he was trying to focus on something real, something in front of him. 

After some hazy amount of time, Ternian came to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, looking in the same direction he was. Directly across from the way was a series of robots frantically reconstructing what looked like it might have at one point been a hospital. There were actually a number of turian biotics at work as well, as apparently a cabal had been brought in. Between the robots and the biotics, they were making short work of the wall they had started on, and Garrus thought, not for the first time in his life, that the discomfort with turian biotics was hilariously outdated.

“He didn’t seem to be in too bad of a mood,” she commented tepidly. 

“He was right,” Garrus stated without turning to look at his new company, but instead picking out one biotic who was coordinating the movement of a massive piece of steel along with several others. The effort was well-organized, betraying that this really was a military outfit. Cabals had been crucial to the survival of Palaven during the war, he knew, and it was fascinating to see their skill turned toward a completely different matter. 

“Oh?” Ternian asked.

“I didn’t quit.”

“That explains why he wasn’t too upset. Why didn’t you quit?”

Now, Garrus turned to look at the general, letting his gaze leave the scene before them just as the steel beam, surely more than a hundred feet long, was placed upright. When he met her gaze, he wasn’t sure what he expected to see, as he hadn’t registered anything in particular in her subvocals, but she seemed genuinely curious.

“It wasn’t one of the options he gave me.”

“The Primarch can be a persuasive man,” the general lauded and gestured with a battle-scarred hand toward the cabal. “There was a time when no one would have worked with biotics, and here we are. Two different cabal units are stationed in Vallum alone.” 

“Humans have a very different view of biotics,” Garrus commented, thinking about how close Shepard had been to her biotic companions in general. The humans didn’t fear them, didn’t have a history which involved biotics being nothing more than shadowy tools. Humans exposed their children to eezo in the blind hopes that their children would be biotics and not simply cancer-ridden, because it was something they prized. Miranda, who always claimed to be the perfect human, was biotic, after all. She was a better example of its success compared to some others, though, Garrus considered, remembering Kaiden’s crippling migraines.

“The humans didn’t have the Unification War,” Ternian countered. “Not that I have anything against biotics, but the humans’ history is not ours.”

Ternian now appraised Garrus once more.

“You made the right decision.”

And those words wrenched straight into Garrus’ heart in a way that he could not have expected. Maybe it was his relationship with his authority or his relationship with the very concept of his species, hearing praise from this acclaimed general felt like something akin to being stabbed in the heart. In a good way, though, if that was possible.

“I know the Hierarchy needs me. I don’t know why, though,” Garrus admitted, almost bitterly.

“Why?” Ternian repeated slowly, as if she couldn’t believe what he had said. “Because without you, our species would be remembered in the war as the first pawn of the Collectors. Saren would be our legacy, but you stood beside Shepard. You made sure that the whole galaxy knew the strength and dedication of the turians.”

“Maybe so, but Adrien has me looking over city planning,” Garrus butted in, because he couldn’t bear to hear any more of the appraisals that he so solidly felt he could never deserve. He had done what he felt was right, that was it. It wasn’t because he wanted to represent his people, it wasn’t because he had intended to do anything other than investigate Saren, and after that… He had done what he did because he respected Shepard more than anything and had wanted to be by her side as she changed the world. 

“And he has me on the financial committee. I don’t know anything about it, but we have to learn. There isn’t a war anymore, so we have to change.”

Garrus had intended to continue his line of self-deprecation but was halted in his tracks as he remembered something.

“What is the committee like?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

“The meetings are long. There’s a lot of math. A lot of red instead of black.”

“Are the others repurposed military, too?

“No, most of them actually belong on the committee.”

Garrus gave a nod and weighed how to ask his next question as carefully as possible, as he really had not done overmuch research on the topic. 

“Is Caitus Oremnion still involved?”

There was a confused look from the general, but she inclined her head. It wasn’t the response Garrus had wanted, but he wasn’t sure how to find out anything more without raising suspicion. Even if Ternian seemed trustworthy enough, that did not mean that she wouldn’t feel the need to rise to the defense of another turian if everything went to hell. Whatever Caitus was involved in, Garrus knew he would have to be more subtle from here on out. His detective skills were rusty to say the least, and he knew this as he tried to recover.

“His messages popped up pretty regularly,” he brushed off.

Ternian gave a scoff of a laugh. 

“Long-winded, isn’t he? The old guard is all like that, though. Maybe when you’re tired of being on the advisory committee, you could join the financial committee and enjoy our seven-hour long meetings every other day. You’re free to sit in on one, since your security clearance is high enough.”

“As pleasant as you make it sound, I have an appointment to make in the Arcturus system soon.”

Ternian gave a look which bordered on confusion, but she evidently thought better about asking. Either she suspected the trip was a top-secret mission, and therefore she shouldn’t be asking questions for security reasons, or she suspected the issue was private, in which case it was simply polite not to pry. 

“Have you chartered a ship?” was the question she settled on asking. It was neutral, it was professional, and yet Garrus was still under the impression that she was concerned about him. He didn’t understand why, but it wrenched inside of him, the thought that anyone cared. He had served his purpose in the war, and now the galaxy could move on without him. Shepard had moved on without him, their crewmates and friends had moved on without him. Maybe the galaxy was even better off without him.

“No,” Garrus admitted after a long pause. He had considered before then that he should, but he had thought that maybe Adrien would make the right decision and send him back to the Citadel. Part of him had also felt some sort of begrudging power in the idea that Shepard had waited five years, and she could wait another day if he were to somehow not get to a ship in a timely manner.

“We have a ship leaving for Earth Alliance space soon. The crew could probably leave a bit early,” Ternian suggested before offering her hand to Garrus. 

The gesture didn’t feel right, however, so Garrus snapped a salute, which took Ternian visibly aback.

“At ease, Vakarian,” she insisted. “If you need support, contact me through the server. As long as I’m not in a meeting, I can get back to you within a few hours.” 

“I hope you can see your wife soon, General.”

Ternian’s subvocals hummed with appreciation. “Take care of yourself.”

Garrus brought his hand down and gave a nod which was only mostly just to placate the general. He knew an order when he heard one, though, and her stern gaze only further impressed that she was serious. Garrus had any number of memories in which his father had given him a similar look, and they had all, eventually, ended up with his father disappointed in him. He had a suspicion that he wasn’t going to follow these order any better than he had obeyed others as a child or in C-Sec. 

He’d always followed Shepard’s orders, though. There had never been a single order she had given that he hadn’t felt beholden to. Even when she stood between him and Sidonis, and he’d wanted nothing more than see that traitor’s brains decorate the ground, he hadn’t found himself able to disobey her. She had been right. She was always right.

“As best I can,” he promised lamely as he tried desperately not think about any part of the past. 

~~~

By the time the sun had set on Taetrus, Garrus had found a spot on a turian military ship which been ordered to drop him off on Eirene, and during the FTL flight to the relay, he finally managed to make himself think about whatever it was he had now gotten himself involved in.

The first thing he started researching was Havenwood itself. What he found, in several quick searches, was that it was actively admitting patients of all species in need of most any assistance; rehabilitation, in-patient physical therapy, psychological support, and even experimental treatments were offered. There was a less emphasized research element to their work as well. It was initially a human-only institution subsidized by the Alliance. More recently, however, within the last twenty-five years, it had opened its doors to all sapient, biological species, and was therefore also subsidized by the Salarian Union and the Asari Republics. 

There was still no coverage about a raider attack, however, which Garrus thought was just as strange as the first time he had tried to narrow down the information Shepard had given him. Older articles on the facility spoke of the reconstruction of part of the station which had suffered light damage in the war. There were several published research studies which referenced the location, but they were behind exorbitant paywalls, so Garrus didn’t bother to skim them much less send out a requisition order. 

Overall, he found absolutely nothing notably interesting about the station, and in particular nothing which would explain why it had been targeted by raiders, short of the assumption he would normally have made: either there was something illegal going on with the station’s research, or there were some interesting controlled substances that someone was eager to get a hold of. 

The next question was what Caitus had invested in deletion at a station which wasn’t even being subsidized by their government. Or also, why did the asari and salarians have a hand in Havenwood, a majority-human station, but not the Hierarchy?

As Garrus tried to find the answer to this question, the only answer he could provide was from subtext of the initial charter and the legal proceedings which had initially determined how the asari and salarians would set aside funds. The answer was simple, unfortunately: it seemed that, while Havenwood did actively employ several turians in different aspects of their medical practice as far as their site stated, the station had been founded before the First Contact War. The humans had not trusted turians with general well-fare after that incident, Garrus knew, and no one had reached out to the Hierarchy in the intervening decades, while the asari and salarian governments had found a new source of scientific information and pursued it with dedication. 

By the time the ship docked in one of the few fueling stations planet-side which had been rebuilt, Garrus had donned his old armor and had his pack shouldered, with his Widow across his back. It was felt unreal, in some way, being in the same armor he had worn during the war, now all these years later. It still fit him perfectly, and his rifle had felt so natural in his hands that he almost couldn’t remember why he hadn’t found something to keep fighting for. 

On Omega, he had chosen to take things into his own hands, and Adrien had been right about the peace they were currently experiencing; it was going to end soon, and no amount of destruction would ever be able to stop people from taking advantage of others. Chaos only ever brought out the worst in those who wanted better their own situations. 

After Garrus had thanked the ship captain, who had simply saluted him and insisted it was not a big detour, he set out to find a shuttle which could take him to the station. He could have simply ordered the ship to dock directly on Havenwood, he was sure, but his movements would be less readily trackable if he took a third-party ship to the location. If Shepard was right, if his gut was right, he did not want the turian government to know where he was going. 

The first captain he approached was an asari who apologized but stated her cargo delivery was time sensitive. She had seemed jumpy, and her eyes had trained on Garrus’ weapon more than once, but Garrus wasn’t a Spectre, and he certainly wasn’t in a position to be prying into cargo holds, so he simply moved on.

It took several more conversations before Garrus found someone willing to take him on as a passenger.

The captain of the small ship was an older human, all of whose hair was entirely grey. Garrus had seen humans with greying hair before, but it had been such a strange experience to start finding individual, nearly-white strands forming in Shepard’s void-black hair. He had heard some humans colored their hair in order to appear younger, but Shepard had not seemed to care at all when they became pronounced, and no one, not even Vega, had dared mention it.

The captain’s name was named Fahri, and he had explained that he was one of several Havenwood contractors who brought supplies into the station as needed. Perhaps even better, he did not ask why Garrus needed to find hitch a ride in the first place. By the time Fahri had finished fueling up, Garrus had already picked up a good bit of intel on the man, who seemed to be unconcerned with a stranger knowing a number of intimate details about his life. 

Fahri was happy to share that he had two daughters, whom he doted upon, and a wife who had retired from serving in the Alliance recently. One of his daughters worked on the station, and when one of the station’s old contractors had been killed in the Reaper war, his daughter had asked him to take the new contract.

“It doesn’t pay too much,” Fahri stated as he buckled himself into the seat in front of the navigation panel and motioning to the only other seat in the small ship, which was to his right. “But Saliha asked so nicely, and my wife has her pension, so we get along just fine.” 

As Garrus strapped himself in, he found himself vividly remembering Shepard’s horrendous Mako expeditions in which he had discovered that turians could indeed get motion sickness, something which Mordin had found endlessly fascinating when briefly mentioned at some point. 

“Havenwood is very good,” the human continued as he started up the ship’s engines, which were making an uncomfortable clanging noise for the first few seconds. After a wheezing start, Farhi’s ship took off into the air, with the man more or less singing the praises of the facility they were headed toward, and Garrus decided that, if they safely arrived at their destination, he was going to examine the engines himself.

He had no idea what he was going to find at Havenwood, and he wanted nothing less than to see Shepard again. At least if he had some small, private project, he could do something with himself that wouldn’t immediately be emotionally charged. Working with tech and engineering was nearly meditative, and Garrus suspected he would need something relaxing once he got whipped back into Shepard’s whirlwind again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a serious note: turian biotic units are canonically called "cabals." This word carries a strong antisemitic connotation, which you can research more yourself, if you're interested. I refrain from personally using this word, and I have only used it here because it is the canon term.  
On a less serious note: I think I've settled for a Tuesday and Thursday posting schedule.


	10. The Halls of Havenwood

Garrus was well acquainted with medical facilities in his time. Between visiting his mother, trying his hand at vigilantism only to get a rocket to the face, and getting occasionally injured on missions with Shepard, he’d seen more doctors than he could count on all his digits. Hospitals were all the same in a lot of ways: the sterile environment, the metal, the cold. The only real difference between any of them was either in the tech they had or the caliber of doctors, in his experience.

Havenwood was no different, it turned out.

The moment Fahri had docked his small ship on the station, Garrus had been greeted with a sterile, long path leading into the main structure.

“You don’t look like you’re here for a visit,” Fahri commented casually from behind Garrus as he started using a magnetic levitation system to allow him to move massive shipments of cargo into the docking area.

“Some other people came here who weren’t looking to visit, and I’m looking into them,” Garrus explained as he took one of the cargo boxes to help the man.

Fahri did not say anything for a moment, but his lips twisted into a deep frown.

“There isn’t much left of them to be looked into anymore.”

“A sniper?” Garrus asked, not considering the fact that Farhi was by all appearances a civilian who probably hadn’t even seen any part of the incident.

The man pushed the cargo forward and gave a slow shake of his head.

“It was bad business,” was all he seemed prepared to offer. It was a stark difference between how willing he was to talk about everything in his family life; the change wasn’t suspicious, really, but it was notable.

Before Garrus could pose a different line of inquiry, they had reached the end of the hallway to stand before a secondary airlock. Once Fahri had punched in a code to open the doors, Garrus found himself face-to-face with an asari, who was wearing armor and carrying a pistol, and a human woman dressed in a high-collared outfit similar to the one Dr. Chakwas frequently wore.

“You must be Garrus Vakarian,” the human addressed before holding out her hand. “I’m Dr. Marina Santos.”

While Garrus shook her hand, he found that the asari was decidedly less inviting than the doctor, her green eyes examining every part of Garrus’ arms and armor with unveiled calculation.

“Sarisa is the acting head of security,” Marina explained as way of introduction.

The asari inclined her head slightly before taking the official manifest from Fahri, who seemed unperturbed by the whole situation. Sarisa scanned it, nodded, and then took the cargo load from Fahri.

“I’m off to see Saliha. Take care of yourself, now,” Fahri insisted as he passed by Garrus and clapped him on the arm.

As the older man walked down the hall without a second glance, Garrus noticed the doctor shaking her head amusedly at his casual exit.

"Thank you for coming,” she said at the same time that Garrus asked,

“So where do I start?”

Before he could apologize, and without blinking, Marina offered, “Right this way,” and led him through a second set of doors which had recently taken heavy fire-damage. From what he could garner at a quick glance, it looked from the blast-patterns as though someone had died here, defending the final door to the facility.

They had killed children, that was why Shepard had managed to rope him into this mess, but as he walked passed a singe-mark in the hall which left the outline of a set of shoulders, Garrus found himself growing reluctantly more and more invested: children evidently hadn’t been the only casualties.

It still didn’t make sense, though. None of it did.

“You mentioned your head of security was killed. Who else?” Garrus asked as he was led down yet another long hall.

“We lost two members of security, one doctor, three employees, and three patients.”

While the doctor looked incredibly tired, Garrus noticed, her tone betrayed her weary acceptance of the situation. There were not dark spots under her eyes, as Garrus had come to expect in humans after sleeplessness, but her slow pace betrayed her age if not her state of mind. She was in her late sixties, with her still-brown hair braided down her back. Turian lifespan was roughly equivalent to a human’s, and she appeared to be faring well as far as Garrus could tell. Even if her gait was slower than he was used to, she still carried herself with her shoulders back and her chin up.

The hallway ended in a large atrium which branched off in three directions. Each hallway was labeled directionally, as the western, eastern, and northern wings, and it was here that the signs of combat were clear once again. There were singed chairs around the room, left in place for the most part, and the desk in the middle of the room was shattered in half. Screens were cracked, and the walls bore more signs of a firefight.

Old habits taking hold, Garrus immediately walked over to look at the desk; it had been broken in the middle by something slamming into it, and from the size of the impact, he suspected that someone with biotics had brought a body down with enough force to be deadly.

While there was no blood to be seen, and it smelled like an abrasive cleaner, it was clear that someone had made sure that the story of what happened was still evident for an investigation.

So far, the movement up to this point was simple: the raiders had docked somehow, probably using docking credentials they had bought or stolen. At the second airlock, they encountered at least one member of security. They had then come to this atrium. Someone had either been injured or killed at the desk, if he correctly understood how violent the impact to the desk was, and from where he stood, he could see that the metal doors to the eastern wing bore several scorch marks as well as signs of forced entry.

“I’ve heard good things about you, Garrus,” the human doctor offered from where she was standing in the entrance to the northern wing.

Garrus turned his head toward her so quickly he nearly hit his fringe on the edge of the broken desk; the way she had spoken to him was so casual, using his first name as though they had already met, as if she really had heard good things about him.

“Probably propaganda,” he deflected.

This comment was met with a sharp look. The doctor’s brown eyes locked onto his with unrepentant calculation. While it felt like he was being measured up, and most likely found to be wanting, it at least gave him some idea of who this woman was in relation to this whole mess.

“You’re Shepard’s doctor,” he concluded as he began to enter the northern wing.

“Her doctor died in the raid,” Marina explained. “But any information I might know about Arison would still be protected.”

Even if she wasn’t Shepard’s doctor, no one called her by her first name unless they were particularly close. Garrus had rarely even used her first name, and even if he had before, it certainly didn’t feel right to anymore. The moment she had weaponized his last name, he found that it was easiest to slip back into the safe, very much public-domain reference to her. She was Shepard, nothing more, nothing less.

“How are the turians faring?” Marina asked gently after a moment of silence stretched between them.

“About as badly as the humans.”

Marina gave a small nod.

“We were lucky here at Havenwood. We had minimal damage from the war, even with a few attempted Cerberus raids. And when the mass effect relays went down, we had enough supplies to last until they were back up.”

“Cerberus was interested in Havenwood?” Garrus asked.

They had been everywhere, it felt like. Joker had once said he missed when the terrorist group was hilariously incompetent, and when Garrus had been told about that comment, he had agreed wholeheartedly. At least back in the day, the majority of the damage they inflicted was on themselves.

“We started as an Alliance facility,” Marina explained, as if she had done it a thousand times before, “but several other intergalactic governments have invested themselves in our work. Either Cerberus was displeased at our diversity, or they were interested in our research. We are a state-of-the-art facility, with most interns at the top of their classes and most professionals at the top of their fields, so it isn’t shocking, I suppose, that they at least tried.”

“What is your specialty, Doctor Santos?” he asked, though he expected that he knew the answer. From the way she had looked at him when he brushed off her compliments, he suspected she at least wasn’t involved in physical health so much as mental health. 

“Child psychology.”

Before Garrus could ask his next question, about whether or not she knew any of the children that had been killed, the doctor stopped in front of a door, which was labeled with her name. She did not immediately open the doors, though. Instead, she turned around and looked up at Garrus with some sort of warning in her eyes.

“I appreciate your help, and Arison does as well, but…”

“But?” Garrus ground out.

He had known that these pleasantries were about as comfortable as this whole thing was going to get, but that didn’t mean that he had to like it.

“But, without stating anything that I may or may not know, she is deeply invested in this, and you are one of the first people she has asked for help in years.”

“Let me guess: you were, too?” he ventured.

“Perhaps,” was her cryptic answer, after which she pressed the button to open the doors to her office.

The first thing he noticed was the mess.

The entire office looked like every individual piece of it had been subjected to zero gravity for a while, floated around randomly, and then left in place once the artificial gravity had been reinstated. In the middle of the floor, like the eye of a storm, sat Shepard. Branching out from her, in no pattern, were physical papers, oddly enough, which were covering just about every horizontal surface. There were datapads, too, dozens of them, scattered about.

Shepard didn’t even look up; she just kept her eyes glued onto the paper she was scanning. She didn’t even seem to notice their presence. Her hair was down, which was still off-putting, but it looked like, despite whatever burst of energy had led her to destroy the office, she had not cleaned her hair since she had last seen him.

“Arison,” Marina addressed, “Garrus is here to help.”

Shepard still did not look up. She didn’t even deign to blink before she asked, “Where are your notes from 2159?”

“Garrus is here to help,” Marina reiterated, now with expectancy in her tone.

Shepard reacted as if she had been ordered by a superior, immediately looking up and locking eyes with the doctor. There was almost nothing behind her gaze, though. She looked nearly as empty-minded as a husk, and it was… wrong. That look didn’t belong on someone who had once held the entire universe together through sheer force of will.

As deservedly angry as Garrus was, he felt something akin to sympathy now.

Then slowly, so slowly, Shepard slid her gaze to Garrus.

Even if her body seemed to be moving at a breakneck pace, it looked at first as though she almost didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t sure who she might have thought he was at first, but instead of what he expected to see, gratitude or happiness or really anything positive, he thought he saw the quickest expression of fear cross her face.

“Thank you,” Shepard said at him after a moment’s hesitation, though the words stumbled together as if she didn’t know what they meant.

“It’s fine,” Garrus shrugged off uncomfortably.

His chest hurt just looking at her. Evidently whatever state she had been in at the Citadel was a good day for her. He couldn’t ask her to come up for air anymore, she had already drowned.

“When was the last time you slept?” he asked in spite of himself

Then, as if everything clicked into place, he saw anger flood into Shepard’s expression.

“You’re not my doctor,” she snarled, bolting haltingly to her feet, a piece of paper still in hand.

Garrus couldn’t see what was written on it, but she clung to it as if she was a woman spaced, and it was a rebreather.

“Arison,” Marina snapped.

“You’re not either,” was the quick return.

“Do you want me to sign off on your refills or not? Now that Dr. Nwosu is dead, and you refuse to see anyone else…”

The tone with which Marina said this made it clear that this wasn’t a threat so much as a reminder, but Garrus still found himself defensive on Shepard’s behalf. He hated the idea that someone so strong could be brought to heel just like any other junkie, but Shepard looked like hell, and at least this was a doctor holding all the chips.

“Garrus is right, Arison,” Marina ceded when Shepard didn’t respond. “You need to sleep. I can show him the rest of the facility in the meantime.”

Shepard frowned, and Garrus watched in morbid fascination as she set down the paper she had clung to so desperately. Then, her hand flattened onto the barely-upright desk, and she leaned herself heavily against it. He had seen her after missions that had dragged on for far too long, and he had seen her exhausted, but he had never seen this. Within seconds, the light in her eyes disappeared again, and her shoulders fell from their normal, ram-rod tenseness.

“You know where to find me, Marina,” she muttered to the desk.

Slowly, she pushed herself off of the support. It looked as if it took every part of her being to remain upright, and she made her way forward as if she would walk passed them without saying anything more. Just as Shepard was at Garrus side, however, she stopped dead in her tracks.

She seemed as surprised about this halt in her movement as he was. There was a pause before she stiltedly offered, “It’s good to see you.”

“You, too, Shepard,” he murmured, much more gently than he had expected himself to.

With that, her eyes slid back to the floor, as if she had not heard him at all, and she walked slowly down the way they had come, toward the atrium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This round of editing saw me adding 500 words to this chapter, but I technically got it up before Thursday ended, so... a win, I guess. Thank you for all your kudos and comments. Every email I get from AO3 makes me feel like a slightly less atomized human being.


	11. Held in Confidence

Garrus did not find out whatever was on that paper which Shepard had held onto so tightly, because as soon as she left the room, Marina walked directly over to it and flipped it face down. Doctor-patient confidentiality, Garrus supposed, as Marina had done it so casually, without even appearing to think about it.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Marina offered as she continued to flip over any more of the papers which sat face up.

“The entire galaxy’s a mess. Your office is better organized than the entirety of Palaven right now,” he tried to joke, but the humor was lost the moment he considered that had he been doing a better job, if he had dedicated some time to learning about the things he was expected to know, then perhaps at least turian space would be better off.

He had not been to Palaven since the war ended, not only because he hadn’t wanted to, but also because he hadn’t been able to make himself do it. He had seen what was left of Earth, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to see his homeworld in shambles, even if his sister had sent several invitations to come visit.

He had only seen his family once after the war, and that had been an unpleasant experience to say the least. He hardly even remembered the meeting; it was all a grey haze of self-hatred and depression, just after they had put Shepard’s empty coffin into the ground on Earth.

He remembered that, at the time, he wished he had asked her if she wanted to be buried on Earth or on Mindoir. Or if she wanted to be buried at all.

“You mentioned a Dr. Nwosu,” Garrus prompted as he tried to pull himself out thinking too much about how much pain he had been in in the intervening years. It only made the current moment hurt all the worse.

“Dr. Nwosu was one of the head doctors here,” Marina explained once she had finished restoring some order to her rifled-through notes. “She was shot in the raid and died despite our best efforts.”

“Why do you think the raiders came?” Garrus asked, slipping back into the depersonalized, puzzle-solving mindset he had cultivated at C-Sec. It felt better to not be thinking about anything other than a project. Of course, regardless of the answer the doctor gave, Garrus was going to do independent research into everything. It was still always important to ask someone involved their opinion on a situation, however. It was always uniquely telling, even if it was always biased.

Marina had her hands clasped around a pile of papers, and with very measured movements, she began to tap it against her desk to align the edges.  
“We handle a lot of patients with special circumstances. The files that were deleted aren’t recent; no one had reported anything missing on current patients. I have no idea what we had, but whatever it was, even we didn’t know it was important.”

“And the children?"

“That, I don’t know, and I don’t understand,” the doctor admitted readily. “The pediatric unit is in the eastern wing, and the information was deleted from there, though it would have made the most sense to go through one of the terminals here in the northern wing, where most of the offices are. All terminals in the facility have the same level of security, so it wasn’t as if they were targeting a specific weak point in our systems.”

“What would be your best guess?” he pressed once more.“That the information the raiders had was at least, in part, incorrect. They either expected security to be decreased in the peds unit, or they didn’t know that the northern wing was where most offices are. Neither option makes much sense, considering how efficiently they tore through the building.”

She was right. Even though neither option made particular sense, it was clear that those were probably the two most likely circumstances that brought the raiders to the pediatric unit in the first place.

This was all about something important, which no one knew was important, something involving Caitus, presumably. There was the possibility that he had been a patient here, but what could have been in medical records that he would pay handsomely to have deleted by a third party with clearly violent tendencies? The information had been uploaded somewhere, as well, so whatever this secret was, Caitus wanted to be the only owner of it.

He could have gone through any number of court systems to have his own records sealed or removed or further encrypted, so Garrus still wasn’t clear why Caitus had hired a relatively well-outfitted group of mercenaries. It wasn’t unheard-of for hired guns to resort to firefights more than was strictly necessary, so if Caitus had known a legal route wouldn’t give him whatever he wanted, the likelihood something would go wrong with the whole venture would explain why Caitus had tried to keep himself unaffiliated. It still didn’t explain why all legal or quasi-legal routes wouldn’t have been an option in the first place.

Garrus knew he was skipping some steps.

There was still the possibility he had initially suspected, that someone was stealing Caitus’ credentials, but that could still be ruled out with this current thread of investigation.

If he was going to get anywhere on this, he would need more information.

“I’ll need access to your systems. Administrative, preferably,” he said, already trying to figure out how he would triage the data to find something that might be missing. “And your security vids.”

“The first, I can do. I already gave Arison an administrative account, but the latter… They knew our facility’s layout and the type of security system we use. They shut off our cams once they reached the atrium. All of them.”

“Shit,” Garrus huffed out.

“Yeah. Shit,” the doctor echoed tiredly. “I was willing to let this… sit… for the time being. Until one of the governments who subsidize us could investigate, because the likelihood of figuring out what happened doesn’t look promising.”

“But Shepard won’t let it go?” Garrus guessed, but he was met with a bit of a sharp glance from the human.

“Perhaps.”

There were too many damn secrets.

It was one thing to solve a crime when you had all of the information available about what had happened. It was something else entirely when even the victim wasn’t willing to produce all of their story. Those were usually the cases that went cold. And Garrus knew that Shepard was not about to let this go. Once she sunk her teeth into something, it happened, or she died. And she’d died twice, as far as he was concerned, and in those cases, something had happened, and she had died.

“Doctor Santos, I’m going to say this as respectfully as I can,” he started. “You want my help. Shepard wants my help. But you’re both hiding things, and that’s not going to get this case solved. I can’t help you if you don’t let me.”

The doctor sat heavily into her chair but met his gaze without hesitation.

“Doctor-patient confidentiality be damned,” he added forcefully. He hadn’t meant to punch the words out, but, despite his best efforts, he was getting roped into caring, and just like Shepard, he wasn’t one to simply let things go.

“I will tell you what I can,” Marina finally offered. “But there are some things that you won’t be able to hear from me. Other people, I’m sure, will help you with whatever I can’t.”

It was a struggle not to be frustrated at the doctor, with her vague offer of assistance, but at least she would be providing something. It was a start. A pathetic little jump of a start, but a start nonetheless.

“I can work with that. You’ll let me know if you can’t answer a question rather than just lying?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do you suspect this was an inside job?”

“No. At least not by an employee or intern. Everyone here is vetted with the utmost precision.”

“Then how do you think they knew the layout?”

“We haven’t changed much of our layout, since our opening in 2153, and those construction plans are available on the extranet somewhere, I don’t doubt. As for our security systems, I’m less sure. That’s not something we go talking about to a lot of people.”

“Do you contract out for your security.”

"No. It’s in-house.”

“Shit,” Garrus repeated, now more frustrated than he expected. Contracted security was always less secure than people liked to believe, and that would have been an easy explanation to any number of the questions he had.

He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting with a job that had Shepard crawling out from the grave after five years of silence, but the instant dead-ends were infuriating.

Fuck.

He would need to try a different tack, once he thought of one, but a new question begged to be asked.

“How do you know Shepard?”

Marina shook her head.

“You’ll have to ask her that.”

“Of course,” Garrus ground out.

His frustration was palpable, evidently, as Marina seemed to take pity on him. She leaned forward, unblinking, and in her eyes, he saw a warning of some sort.

“Any questions about Arison, you’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“She’s not even your patient.”

“I may be a child psychologist, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how adults are supposed to work things out,” was the nearly sarcastic reply. It was telling, though, because from everything Garrus could parse, Marina knew that he and Arison had had something once. For whatever reason, Arison had trusted this woman to tell her an awful lot. More than she had probably ever told Garrus. Maybe Shepard had even deigned to tell this doctor why she had disappeared for years.

But as infuriating as it was, the doctor had a point.

“Would she forgive either of us if I told you things that she didn’t want anyone to know?” Marina asked, echoing the line of thought that Garrus had just been finishing in his own mind. “I appreciate you coming here. Everyone at Havenwood appreciates it, because without you or Arison, no one would be looking into this at all. Not for years. And I’ll tell you this, since she probably won’t be as upset as with other things: she appreciates you being here, too. I can neither confirm nor deny that perhaps she’s missed the people she cares about.”

Garrus let out a hiss of a breath, because those words punched into him, the emotional equivalent of being slammed into a metal wall by a biotic pulse or an explosion.

“Thought you weren’t her doctor,” he tried to joke to press down the pain rising in him.

If she missed him, why did she let him suffer?

Marina gave a noncommittal shrug of her hunched shoulders, but her eyes danced with some amusement. Even if she could probably tell he was deflecting, she was a psychologist after all, she did still seem to accept his attempt at humor.

“How about I show you where you can set up shop?”

“It better not be a hospital bed,” he joked.

Marina’s lips curled into a smile, and she shook her head.

“No, we won’t set you up in the peds unit, either, so maybe you can get some sleep if you ever want some,” she promised.  
~~~

The first thing Garrus had learned about the layout of the facility was that each wing was dual-purpose. The western wing had one section for physical therapy and rehab, and the other contained the living facilities for the Havenwood’s employees.

Garrus had been taken aback when Marina showed him where he would be staying. There were pods of rooms, all of which contained a shared living space and a number of private bedrooms, and these areas looked genuinely as inviting as any pre-furbished apartment.

As Marina showed Garrus the room he could use for the time being, she informed him that he would be sharing the common space with two techs, one of whom worked the nightshift. Marina then went so far as to wake the tech, despite Garrus’ instance that they should just let him sleep.

When the door opened, Garrus was guiltily face-to-face with a very bleary looking salarian.

“Don’t see many turians here,” he had commented before blandly pleading, “just please don’t make too much noise.”

“Quiet as a pyjack,” Garrus promised, which had the salarian launching into some small lecture about the noises pyjacks did, in fact, make.  
Marina politely edged their way out of the one-sided conversation, insisting that Garrus was needed elsewhere. The salarian narrowed his eyes before wordlessly closing the door once more. She then walked him back to inspect his new room further.

“How long had you worked here?” he asked as he began to rifle through his pack, which had been brought into the room by someone at some point.

“I was here just after we opened. Back when the hiring wasn’t so competitive,” she offered with a bit of a laugh.

“And you’ve lived like this the whole time?”

“Longer. I went to a college with fifty thousand other people and shared a dorm with over a thousand other students.”

“And I thought the military was cramped,” Garrus teased. Fighting on Menae had been miserable for a thousand different reason, the least of which was having to grow accustomed to living with ninety-nine turians to one prefab bunker a piece.

“I can’t speak for the Hierarchy, but I’ve heard some former-Alliance nurses say that they preferred it when they could actually get some sort of shore leave after living like sardines.”

“Well, legally, I can speak for the Hierarchy, and I think I’m beginning to understand why there aren’t many other turians here.”

“Oh?” Marina asked with mirth pulling at the corners of her eyes.

“Yeah, I can barely stand around here without hitting my fringe.”

This was met with a sincere chuckle from the doctor.

“Get us Hierarchy subsidization, and we can talk about raising every roof in this building half a foot. Until then, Garrus, I can only assure you that we have enough doctors here in case you do hit your head.”

As Marina ended her retort with a grin, Garrus started to understand why perhaps Shepard trusted the doctor so much; Marina was intuitive, whip-smart, and evidently was an old hand at banter. Even if working with Shepard was going to be nothing short of miserable, at least there would be someone he could communicate with like a real, living person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the content-free week last week. My dad dumped 18 chapters of his history book on me to edit in less than ten days, so that took up all my time outside of work. We should be back to our regular schedule for the foreseeable future.


	12. Corps-à-corps

Computers made sense.

Even when they didn’t make sense, they made sense. If something went wrong with a computer, it was something wrong with its wiring or its programming; there were only so many things that could go wrong with something created to do exactly as it was told. Anything wrong was an issue with the commands themselves or the hardware, either of which Garrus understood to the point of near expertise. 

Marina had long since left Garrus to his own devices, and this meant that he had fallen fringe over spurs into the facility’s back-end programming. Using the administrative account Marina had made for Shepard, he first started by looking over how the system catalogued items internally. Apparently, in order to maintain security, the files were not stored in order of editing or creation, but were numbered with a randomly generated number system, which was tied into camera trained on a series of fish-tanks somewhere on the station. 

This was the first digital dead-end, since Garrus couldn’t simply find out what exact second the files had been altered and backtrack from there. This was when Garrus resorted to the more tedious option of opening random files in the hopes that he would trigger a notification that one which was corrupted or that the original destination couldn’t be found. 

It only took three hours before his eyes started to hurt, and Garrus began to suspect that this line of inquiry was a massive waste of his time. If Shepard, who knew computers and code better than most anyone alive, hadn’t found something yet and found herself resorting to rifling through physical notes, then his blind searches weren’t going to produce anything new. 

There was one benefit to randomly opening patient file after patient file, though: the information itself was interesting, even if Garrus had no background in medicine short of what he was required to learn first at C-Sec as a potential first responder and then in the military for triage purposes. Havenwood’s site hadn’t been lying when it said it handled any sapient species. From mental health to physical, Garrus found case after case which spanned the range of every council-recognized race. Doctor Marina had not been kidding when she said that Havenwood was state-of-the-art, either, and evidently it always had been, even from its opening.

After five hours, Garrus ended up searching topics he was relatively sure that he, legally, was not supposed to be looking into, but he wasn’t about to abuse the information, and the administrative account let him view whatever he wanted. Even if some part of his conscience felt uncomfortable with the nearly unlimited access to patient information, he reasoned that if he had been given access, he was allowed to use it as he thought fit. 

Out of curiosity, he had looked up the first turian patient the facility had ever seen. 

He was surprised to find out that it was a private during the First Contact War. She had been shot and taken to this facility out of desperation, as her ship had run low on medigel. It was clear that the human doctors had little idea of how exactly to help their patient, but she had been discharged in good health after a week, during which the humans had made a considerable number of notes about how to treat turian patients. He even found the preliminary protocol on how to treat turians, which was interesting in its own right, as it gave insight as to how the humans had tried to understand this alien species they felt was attacking them without reason. 

His curiosity piqued, Garrus then found himself looking into Havenwood’s first turian employee.

As it turned out, that same private had ended up back at Havenwood as a laboratory technician. He found archived notes about her initial interview with the head of the hospital at the time, one Dr. Anikyu. There was clearly hesitancy from members of the hiring board, but Dr. Anikyu sited the private’s excellent marks during her medical education, as well as the fact that she, having been a patient, understood what Havenwood believed as regarding its treatment of those needing assistance. 

Even if there were questions about the turian’s capability, there were records for her hiring. 

That spurred him onto a different train of the thought, though. He began pulling up the patient files for all turians who had been checked into Havenwood, but none of them matched Caitus’ description. It wasn’t impossible that some part of the information had been changed in order to obscure his identity, but still nothing in the files Garrus scanned through looked damning at all. There wasn’t anything which indicated a turian patient’s file might have been missing information, either.

By the time Garrus was interrupted by a brutal knock on his door, he had been staring at a screen for so long that his eyes physically hurt from the strain, and being brought out of his thoughts reminded him of how badly his back ached from hunching over, as well. He put down the datapad he was working from and made his way over the door a bit slower than he would have liked.

As the doors opened, Garrus rubbed his palms against his eyes, only to find an equally beleaguered looking asari standing impatiently before him.  
Before he could ask her any questions, the asari hissed, “The human sent me to get you. As if I wasn’t in the middle of data entry. Two hours after my shift ended. Which I really appreciated.”

“Where is she?” he asked, knowing that there was only one human this asari would be talking about.

“Eastern wing. Go straight down the hall, take two lefts, and then follow the scorch marks from the raiders. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go straight into a coma, data entry left or not” 

“Thanks?” Garrus tried to extend after her as she left. The asari said nothing in return, which was fair, all things considered. 

He followed the directions and found Shepard standing in the exact middle of the room, in parade rest, waiting for him.  
Despite her collected appearance, however, the space around her in a state of was absolute destruction. There had once been a terminal in the middle of the room, but its battered appearance was literally the least interesting part of the entire space. The air smelled like iron, sharp and cloying, betraying the fact that a massive amount of blood had covered the floor, though it was mostly clean at the moment. There was a table turned over for cover near the terminal which had not been granted the same treatment as the floor, as it still visibly had red blood flecked across it in several spots. The walls were also not yet sanitized, as Garrus could make out at least one headshot’s splatter at a height appropriate for either an asari or a human. 

In the middle of it all, Shepard retained her silent, watchful gaze as Garrus inspected the room from the doorway. She looked as if she had at least slept a bit, and from the confident way in which she held herself, he suspected that she had taken a number of drugs not long ago. With that self-possessed air, she almost looked like she used to, and that was the vast majority of what had Garrus rooted where he was, unable to really enter.

Even with her hair down, had he seen her like this weeks ago, he would have broken down, knowing that Arison was still alive. Her civilian clothes covered so much of her that Garrus couldn’t even see how frail he knew she was. With the way they were starched, he could easily have let himself imagine that beneath the layers, she was still all wiry muscle. 

Garrus felt himself sag forward a bit, because this was a heady recreation of dreams he had tried so hard to forget: Arison, who wasn’t really one for grand entrances, would just show up one day, having fought death itself or something to get there, looking exactly as he had last remembered her before she beamed up to the Catalyst on her own.

Before Garrus could sink any further into his desperate hopes that he had Arison back, she spoke.

“The raiders docked at exactly 0300, which is the middle of the night-shift,” she launched into without hesitation. “They made their way to the intake area, where they shut down all electronic security. By 0325, they had killed three children and officially hacked into the records.” 

It was as if she didn’t remember seeing him yesterday, and more disturbingly, the whole thing was told so stiffly and stiltedly that it felt like he was receiving this unprompted and redundant briefing by a poorly programmed Shepard VI. 

“And what time were they all dead by?” Garrus asked in return, as this was information he needed to create a precise timeline, even if he wanted to beg for the stranger in front of him to stop wearing the body of the woman he had loved.

Shepard blinked at the question, which was more than he expected, honestly.

“0329,” she offered without the slightest hesitation.

When he had had her six, when he had spent at least part of almost every day with her, he had gotten used to her precision. Arison had been precise about everything: mathematical calculations, speaking, timing… Where at first it had been strange and mechanical to him, he had long ago come to know that exactitude as something that simply defined her. Now, however, the facts spit out at him so disjointedly just felt like he was speaking to a cheap computer, lagging and lifeless and cold.

“What did you do with the bodies?” 

“They’re in the morgue. They had nothing identifying on them.”

“Why do you think this happened?” Garrus asked, pressing the same question to Shepard that he had to Marina, since it was one of the last lines of questioning he could hold onto with his thoughts roiling so miserably.

A moment of silence sat in the room heavily.

“Mostly likely,” she posited, “because I was here.” 

Garrus raised one his brow-plates, the turian equivalent of a human raising an eyebrow, because he simply couldn’t believe that was her real answer. It made no sense. It was so self-absorbed and ridiculous.

“They hacked and deleted old files, because you happened to be here scamming a doctor into give you drugs?” he demanded incredulously. 

The whole time Garrus had known her, he had watched as she bore the weight of the world on her shoulders with grace. Every single thing that had gone wrong, she had blamed on herself, and he had spent hours trying to gently convince her that every evil wasn’t on her head, but now, he couldn’t really summon the same sympathy he had then. For a number of reasons.

“There are two ways we can do this,” Shepard continued so quickly that she nearly cut him off. “The first involves searching for whatever was deleted, which I had had no luck with, or we try to learn more about Caitus’ finances and background to look for a link that way.”

“If you haven’t figured out what’s missing, I’m not going to,” Garrus admitted readily. “So that leaves the bank. Or, since I have clearance, we could go to Palaven ourselves and just ask him ourse—”

“No!”

Her response was vehement, nearly bordering on a shout, a sudden and violent break from her absolutely inhuman detachment. Even Shepard looked shocked by this fracture in her façade, as she tightly shut her eyes and took in a very slow and regulated breath. Her mouth moved, as if she was saying something, though Garrus couldn’t make out what, before she gently let out the breath she had been holding. 

“He cannot know we’re looking into this,” she explained. 

On one hand, she was right. If Caitus knew that there was an investigation being performed, he would assuredly double-down on his security, which would be frustrating, but not impossible to deal with. Her response was just out of place and wildly disproportionate.

“I’m guessing that if I ask why, you won’t give me a straight answer?”

“We can’t,” she responded, her tone a challenge in and of itself, “because he has already covered his tracks very well. What will he do when he knows someone is actively looking into what’s going on? We have the jump on him, and we can’t afford to lose that.”

Even if there was the vaguest hint of truth in her words, his conclusion held up. While it was nice to have a jump on a case, the suspect knowing they were a suspect rarely ever changed much. She was still hiding something from him, and this was just another of countless dead-ends. Everyone around him knew more than him, and they still couldn’t solve the mystery, so how could they expect him to? Why had Shepard even bothered to bring him into this mess if she was just going to keep lying to him without apology. 

“So you killed them,” Garrus surmised aloud, after trying to find something else to focus on his frustration. 

Shepard turned her back to him, tracing his gaze, and then gave a terse nod. 

“Yeah,” she admitted. And then, more softly, she added. “It took a whole clip.” 

She had teased him about being out of practice in the bar on the Citadel, and Garrus still felt the echoes of indignation from that, but he was more confused as to why after all this stoic playacting, Shepard would admit that one of her greatest skills had either gone rusty or been lost. 

“They’re dead either way,” Garrus almost-comforted. 

“And so are three kids.”

And suddenly, just as before at the bar, Shepard seemed to break at least slightly. Her voice dripped sorrow and desolation, and Garrus felt the impulse to put a hand on her shoulder, to comfort her and support her. His arm was extended slightly when she finally turned back to him, and the moment she met his gaze, all emotion was gone once more, and with it, his need to help her. Garrus brought his hand back to rest at his side as casually as could be managed, but Shepard did not seem to notice.

“Dr. Santos didn’t understand why they came here,” Garrus offered, trying to grind any more information out of this miserable encounter, so he had to spend as little time around Shepard as necessary. 

“Marina,” Shepard corrected quickly.

Nothing made sense, everyone was keeping secrets, Shepard may as well be dead for all it was worth, and now she was going to use that tone with him, the one she used when curtly giving orders? No. 

He wasn’t here because he wanted to just peel open old wounds, he was here because… 

Because he had a need to help her that probably classified as pathological. 

But he wasn’t going to take this. She had asked for help, and she’d get it, but they were on equal footing here. 

“I’m not using her for drugs, so we’re not quite on a first-name basis yet,” Garrus countered, trying his best to make the words sound like banter once he realized he simply couldn’t hold in his anger anymore. 

The comment struck home, however, despite any attempt at disguising the jab, and Shepard’s blue eyes narrowed sharply. 

“I’m not drug-seeking,” she snarled in return.

“Spoken like a true drug-seeker.”

Omega had been rife with addicts. Even the Citadel had its fair share of users who claimed to be recreational rather than addicted. Every single one of them had that hungry and desperate look in their eyes when their drug of choice was mentioned. And when pressed, all of them would all provide different excuses to hide their state. No addict thought they were addicted, as far as Garrus had ever seen, unless they were getting treatment or were trying to get clean. 

Before he could take the words back, with a speed Garrus had not thought she would be capable of in her current state, Shepard stalked forward, bringing herself closer to Garrus than she had been since first being reunited. She was voluntarily inches from him, and now, standing face to face, Garrus could see the cataclysmic pain underlying her furor. And guilt settled into his heart instantly.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” she snarled. 

“You’re right, I don’t,” Garrus nearly begged. 

He wasn’t looking to shut her down, he wasn’t trying to shut her up. Spirits, he wanted nothing more than for her to take him up on this unspoken invitation and explain something, anything, about what was happening with her. 

Garrus had seen Shepard truly furious before, but never before had it been directed at him. She had been furious with the council, with the quarians, but never with anyone on her crew. Garrus began to understand why, because, though Shepard had rarely made use of it, her anger frightened people, cowing others before her.

It didn’t look right, either, seeing her eyes narrowed so tightly, her lips twisted into a snarl. Humans weren’t apex predators, not the same way turians were, with their blunted teeth and nails of thin keratin, but there was something feral and unguarded about her now that he had never seen before. It reminded him the varren fighting rings he had helped bust in C-Sec. The creatures were beaten, scared, and violent, and they almost always had to be put down once their owners had been arrested. Rehabilitation was expensive and not usually successful, not with the ones who had been raised into it or been subjected to those conditions for years.

“You and everyone else let me sacrifice myself for the world. You all turned a blind eye to me taking stims, and why? Because I was going to save the galaxy. Well guess what? I did, and I think that’s earned me a right to not live every god damn minute of my life in pain!”

Every word she spoke was clearly betraying more than she wanted, but it was evident that she couldn’t stop herself. And the barbs of guilt were only held at bay by the fact that Shepard had hurt him, too. 

The readouts on his visor told him that her vitals had sparked dangerously, her heart even skipping beats, and as much as a shouting match might garner more information, Garrus knew Shepard needed to calm down right away. 

As Garrus brought his hands up in the universal gesture of goodwill, he watched as Shepard’s icy eyes darted to the space behind him.

He whipped around, expecting trouble, only to find a very young drell, barely out of infancy, who had been in the process of being led passed the room by a human nurse. The nurse was very intently looking straight down the hallway, trying to pay no attention to whatever argument was happening, but the drell child had halted, its dark eyes locked onto Garrus, its expression beyond terrified. 

Shepard dropped to a knee so quickly that Garrus thought she had begun to pass out, and he couldn’t help but lunging forward slightly until he realized the movement was intentional. As he righted himself to pretend that he had not moved to help her, Shepard began to reassure the child in the softest tone Garrus had ever heard from her.

“It’s okay,” she insisted. 

“Is he here to kill us, too?” the small child asked, its voice wavering.

“No, no, he’s here to help. I promise.”

It was like getting whiplash, watching how quickly her energy changed. All fury in her had left in that instant she caught sight of the child, and by the time the nurse had succeeded in convincing the child to keep moving, Shepard was once more falling into a very different state.

As Shepard watched the child walk away, she rested all of her weight onto one knee and one hand and forced herself back to her feet with gritted determination. It wasn’t obvious what made the movement so difficult, but by the time Shepard was standing up, Garrus could see that she was winded. 

This wasn’t just drug abuse. 

Sure, she was probably using Havenwood to support at least some part of her addiction, but way Shepard had panicked about the child’s fear betrayed more than anything she would have been willing to talk about. 

“Shepard,” Garrus managed, now speaking as softly as she had with the child in an attempt to match her new, defeated energy, “what happened to you?”

She let out a scoff of a laugh and refused to meet Garrus’ searching gaze.

“What didn’t?” 

It didn’t answer his question, not really, but it also wasn’t a lie, and if Garrus’ suspicions were at all right, the help Shepard needed wasn’t really anything he could provide.

“Are you talking to Dr. Santos, then?”

“It’s going to take more than CBT to fix me,” Shepard dismissed, now pulling herself away and leaning heavily against the desk where the damaged terminal sat. 

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t help,” Garrus was quick to insist. 

Was it hypocritical to say it? Probably, but even if he was the world’s biggest hypocrite, it didn’t mean he was wrong.

“Once this is taken care of, I’ll be better,” she explained without explaining anything at all.

“Why?” Garrus asked, now actually begging for her to help him understand. 

Slowly, Shepard pushed herself back off the desk. Her arms tremored visibly as she attempted to do this, and Garrus could see that even despite her long sleeves. There was a muscle in the back of her neck twitching, too, at a rate that he was absolutely sure was painful for her. 

“Look through your server, and if you find anything interesting there, forward it to me. I’m going to try to find an in with the bank.” 

Shepard clearly intended to simply walk away, to go wherever it was that she was staying on the station, but Garrus could not stop himself from putting a hand on her shoulder gently as she crossed in front of him.

“Why, Shepard?” 

It was the start of all of his questions, that one simple word. He had been repeating it ad nauseum for days as he tried so desperately to learn what variables were missing from this equation before him. Why him? Why now? Why here? 

Garrus fully expected her to rip away from his touch as if he had hurt her. Or perhaps she would push his hand off of her with a snarl and something scathing on her lips, but instead, Garrus was shocked to find that she simply stopped where she was and remained very still. Then slowly, so slowly he almost didn’t notice it, she applied the slightest pressure back against his hand. For one peaceful moment, she was accepting help.

He stood, stock-still, as if she was a wild animal who would spook at the slightest movement. It was like the moments after she had woken up beside him, panting and frantic, where she would finally come back down from the fear and lean into him. 

Shepard moved her head such that she was looking at his talons, looking at them as if she had never seen a turian’s talons before, and then hesitated, as if thinking.

“I’m not going to be helpless again.”

Then, with this apropos of nothing statement, hissed with determination, she shrugged out of his touch and began to walk further into the wing. Garrus’ reeling held him in place, but despite this, he did not fail to notice how after a few meters, her gait became uneven, betraying a limp which she had been hiding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Please enjoy this double-length chapter, my penance for missing a week of updates.  
(2) Also, if anyone is interested, I have a playlist for this fic on Spotify that I listen to when I write: it's "Children's Crusade" by iathsdaughter. Also, you may notice I changed my username on here to that same name. Sorry for any confusion, it was just time for a brand update. (And a username people could actually spell...)  
(3) I consulted with a legit tech expert to write this with any sort of believably. So, many thanks to silkinsilence for her help! Check her out for some very, very well-written fic.  
(4) I'm going to Chicago next month, and I've been there before and seen all the major tourist destinations. If anyone has any weird/ niche things to do in the city, please, please give me recommendations.


	13. Rinse/Repeat

_It was too early in the morning for almost anyone to be up; even the crew members who weren’t human were all more or less on a human sleep schedule by now. At least with Adrien onboard, Garrus had been able bump into someone else on occasion when all but the skeleton crew were asleep. _

_This meant that when Garrus made his way to the crew deck, he expected that he was going to find the same thing he had during his last few late-night rounds: his new Primarch would be sitting at a table, working on something, but they’d get into a conversation about something related to the war almost immediately. The last few of these dead of night conversations hadn’t exactly been relaxing or uplifting, but the fate of their entire species was on their shoulders, and they both knew it. Adrien seemed like a good commander and a good enough person, but that didn’t mean that there had been any chance for them to discuss anything even remotely personal._

_But instead of the silence which he was expecting, Garrus was stopped just outside of the elevator by the sound of, first, the Primarch’s voice. And then Shepard’s. They were barely audible, though, and he had to strain to hear what they were saying._

_"And what of your family?” Adrien asked, his subvocals clearly spelling out the sorrow that his words didn’t betray. That was the problem with translators, but then again, Arison was wickedly intuitive. She had never needed to hear Garrus’ subvocals to know what he meant. _

_She was always checking on her crew, too. She looked out for everyone aboard, so of course she was checking in someone who had just lost a son. It didn’t matter to her that he was a recently initiated galactic leader whom she hardly knew. She just cared about other people._

_Spirits, that was one of the things he loved most about her._

_"My family is here,” Arison responded._

_Garrus could imagine exactly how she said that, motioning around the ship as she spoke. Everyone aboard the Normandy was her family, and she acted like it. She went out of her way to take care of them all, personal disagreements with them aside. _

_But after everything was over, if there was still a world left, there was nothing he wanted more than to have some stupidly impossible life with her. He hoped she was thinking of him when she thought of family, even if she wouldn’t say it._

_"You do well by your crew. It’s commendable. And very turian. The Spirit of the Normandy takes your form.”_

_There was no way Arison could know the implications a compliment like that. Not to mention it was said by the Primarch himself. Even having barely overheard it, Garrus felt such bursting pride for her. There was nothing Shepard couldn’t do. She was a human who at this point was more a turian than he was. _

_"I’m flattered,” she said slowly, “but there’s no Normandy without its crew. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for every single person on this ship pulling their weight and then some.” _

_Garrus finally managed took a slow step back into the elevator. This was not a conversation for him, that much was painfully evident, and as much as he wanted to know exactly how highly everyone thought of the woman he was spurs over fringe for, this wasn’t for him. _

_He had his talon above the button which would shut the silent doors and take him down to engineering, to see if Tali was up, when the tone of the conversation changed, and he froze. _

_"Vakarian speaks highly of you.”_

_Arison let out this grunt of a noise, something she’d given Garrus any number of times when she didn’t want to talk about something. It was one thing, though, to hear it from his girlfriend, but it was something else entirely to hear her try to avoid a conversation with a famous former-general who now ran a government in control of an entire damn species._

_ It wasn’t disrespectful; she was never disrespectful. No, she was just his equal._

_“Garrus had a good bit to say about you, too,” she deflected like she’d practiced it in a mirror. _

_"He’s young, but he has promise,” Adrien began, clearly not buying into Arison’s dismissal. “You gave him a chance to show his colors.”_

_Hearing the compliments only made the itching under his skin feel worse. Hearing them talk about his vague existence was one thing; hearing them say good things? That was, for some reason, so much worse._

_Once again, Adrien’s statement was met with only a simple hum of agreement. _

_There were some topics they didn’t talk about. That was a given at this point. Arison had her past, and she wanted it to stay in the past, so Garrus knew when Arison was trying to avoid a topic, but it was strange to hear her try to eke her way out of speaking about something with a man Garrus took orders from, that literally every turian citizen in the galaxy was supposed to take orders from. _

_“I don’t know how much you know about turian culture--” Adrien started, but was cut off._

_"More than you think.”_

_“Then you know what Garrus thinks of you. Personally, not just as his CO.” _

_During the pause that followed Adrien’s comment, Garrus began to feel a tightening in his chest, like he had done something that he felt guilty about, cripplingly guilty. Before, he was breaking a few social rules. Now, though? He felt like a criminal. _

_But that didn’t mean he could stop listening. Because he needed to know what Arison knew, what she thought. _

_He loved her. She loved him; she’d said it. But would she say it to anyone else?_

_She was a private person. She knew everything about everyone on board, knew their birthdays and even the birthdays of their family members. He’d seen them all in the electronic calendar she kept meticulously._

_So, there was no part of Garrus that was surprised when she didn’t give a straight answer._

_"And how does this involve you, Primarch?” Arison finally asked. It wasn’t coy, but it was clear that there was something she was keeping close to her chest. Garrus could only hope it was because she was thinking of him. _

_“If you ever need to be made an honorary turian, just send me a message. That’s all,” Adrien chuckled._

_What would she be if she was his wife? Obviously, still a human. But she’d be Commander Shepard, at his side not just because she liked his scars or appreciated it when he cleared a shot before she could take it herself. _

_But the longer it took Arison to say something, the worse the clamping in his chest got. He couldn’t see what she was thinking about the idea that maybe one day they could be something more than… whatever they were now._

_It took seconds, and Arison still hadn’t responded, when Garrus finally managed to break the trance he’d fallen into. Only once the doors had shut could he even press the button to go to engineering. _

_She hadn’t laughed at the offer, even though it was a joke, sort of. But she also hadn’t given a serious response. What did no response even mean in a situation like that? _

_She had told him she loved him. Repeatedly. Why did this response now matter so much when she had shown the trust in him that she had? She didn’t let anyone but him in, and that had to mean something serious? He wasn’t just in this for the few nights they could spend together, and Shepard acted the same way._

_But he still couldn’t stop thinking about how she hadn’t given an outright answer._

Four hours.

Garrus spent four hours straight pouring over everything under Caitus’ name in the Hierarchy server.

There were meeting minutes, thousands and thousands of them. There were the legal proposals he had submitted or co-written Garrus had seen days ago when he had first looked into Caitus. It was going to take a lifetime just to read everything Caitus had produced, and all Garrus could garner from what he could skim was a very general impression: the man was a career soldier turned politician after the First Contact War. He wasn’t old by turian standards, really, but he stood with the old guard.

Garrus knew that if he was ten years younger, he would have idolized Caitus, who seemed like the perfect turian. He had served his species through combat and then turned to serving through politics, and he had done both zealously, because he cared about his people.

Caitus had apparently studied architecture on top of all that.

An extranet search about his history provided little. Caitus had been wounded in the First Contact War, but he had continued serving until it officially ended. By then, he had risen notably in the Hierarchy and worked on Palaven in a couple different legislative groups. He occasionally headed clandestine military operations off-world, Garrus found in a very well-researched news report about the breaking up of a slavery ring about twenty-five years prior, but despite all this, Caitus had never been considered for Spectre status, as far as any records could show.

Four hours of staring at a screen and finding barely anything was maddening.

When he had agreed to help, he had expected a chance to use his gun again, to actually be taking matters into his own hands. He had not expected that he would be getting strained eyes and pulled muscles from reading tedious legislative proceedings, and that meant that it didn’t take long for him to find himself in the docking bay, fiddling intently with the engines of Fahri’s ship in order to let off some steam. He had initially received questioning looks from several staff members, but eventually he was left to work in peace.

The engines were ancient, definitely torn from another, older ship and cheaply installed on the current body. Some of the wiring was questionable, as well, so Garrus found himself covered in grease and grime by the time he realized he should probably take a break. He was starving, but that didn’t mean he wanted to stop, not by a long shot. Tedious, delicate work was meditative, and the moment he left the docking bay, he would be thrust back into whatever weird authority knowing Shepard had granted him on this station.

She had been so strange in that room with the terminal. And every single time it felt like he could recognize her, she seemed happy to remind him that he hadn’t seen her in years and that she was only letting him in out of desperation. But she’d gotten him into this mess, and if Shepard needed someone to rival her stubbornness, he would happily rise to the occasion.

That was the only thought that managed to get him out from the docking bay where he had been blessedly left in peace and into the cafeteria in the western wing.

The cafeteria was not massive. It could hold probably less than a quarter of the patients at Havenwood, but it made sense given the fact that most patients probably ate meals in their rooms. The staff probably did, too. Garrus got into line behind an older human who was clearly adjusting to the two new prosthetic legs he had. There was a nurse in front of him, so it wasn’t hard to guess that this was part of the man’s physical therapy.

As he got close enough to eye the food, Garrus was taken aback by the fact that, not only were there a number of dexro offerings, but none of them looked even the slightest bit unpalatable. He’d eaten his fair share of repulsive food in his time, the worst probably being during his stint on Omega, so it was genuinely nice to see some options he wouldn’t have to talk himself into eating.

After receiving a plate piled full of an asari interpretation of a traditional Palaven meal, Garrus began to scan for a spot to sit where he would be noticed the least. There were several open tables with no one else sitting around them, but the most promising of the options was a rather secluded table towards the back, which Garrus sat himself at quickly.

There weren’t many turians on the station. He’d only seen a few, even as patients, since he first arrived, so he was pleasantly surprised to find that Havenwood’s cooks had created something that he didn’t have to choke down in misery. The food was delicious, not quite how his mother had cooked it, but when was the last time he’d eaten something prepared within the last few hours? Probably years.

This meant that when he barely saw the movement of someone sitting down across from him, he didn’t bother to greet them. What was important was savoring every bite of this meal, not engaging some stranger in conversation.

But after a moment, when nothing was said and a plate was slid reluctantly down onto the table, Garrus finally lifted his eyes to see who had braved joining him.

Looking more miserable than he had ever seen her, was Marina with a plated meal almost entirely consisting of leaves. Salad, he knew it was called, and every time he saw it, he was shocked humans could live on a diet with so little caloric and nutritional value to it.

“I’ve been told that Chef Ganim makes excellent dextro food,” Marina offered as she skewered some of the greenery with a level of violence that didn’t seem strictly necessary.

Garrus let out a grunt of agreement but finished chewing before answering.

“Almost like home.”

“Where is home for you? Palaven?” she asked, pulling the speared leaf around her plate reluctantly.

The movement had nothing to do with the conversation, Garrus was figuring out. It wasn’t that this was some subliminal messaging; she just definitely did not want to eat her salad.

But the question threw him for a quick moment. Where was his home?

He’d been born on Palaven, sure. But that didn’t mean it was his home. Being born some place didn’t mean much really. He’d lived for a while on the Normandy. But that ship was owned by the Alliance, and it was currently under Ash’ captaincy, so that couldn’t be his home, that would just be weird on a few levels.

That left the Citadel, and that would only be a possible answer because he had spent years there. But when he had first seen the ruins of the Citadel, he hadn’t felt much. He had already known that it would be decimated. When he’d seen Cipritine from space, he’d felt like a part of himself was dying, even if that wasn’t his home. And when he’d been there for the formal ceremony where Ash was given the Normandy, he’d gone home with four different bottles of liquor that he then drank in quick succession.

He’d seen the ruined Citadel and felt nothing. 

“The Citadel, probably,” he settled for, despite the fact that it was a bold-faced lie.

“Is that where your family is?”

“They’re on Palaven,” he conceded.

How many times had his father had insisted he return to Palaven to help it rebuild? Solana had followed up on every message sent out, too, to make sure Garrus had gotten it. He had ignored the messages for a long time, until Solana threatened to find him and hunt him down herself. So when Garrus finally got the courage to tell his father he wasn’t interested in going back to their homeworld, he expected that he would hear the typical disappointment his father had in his voice when talking to him in general. Instead, in an about-face Garrus would never have guessed would happen in a trillion years, his father had actually respected the decision. For the first time, his father had said that he understood and even mentioned that Garrus’ close position to the Primarch was a point of family pride.

Even hearing those words, something he’d only dreamed of years ago, hadn’t so much as made him slightly less unhappy. He had just left the call feeling like he was the galaxy’s most impressive conman if his father finally thought he was doing something good with his life.

“Not liking you leaf-meal?” Garrus asked, after moments had passed in which the doctor still had not taken a bite of her food.

Marina brought her eyes down to her plate and then let out a sigh.

“Every dietitian on this station keeps telling me I need to eat better, and they’re all here right now. If I don’t eat a salad, I won’t hear the end of it for a week. That’s the miserable truth about living in a medical facility with other professionals, we all have opinions about what’s best for each other. And we’re normally not quiet about it.”

Garrus glanced conspiratorially toward the line of people waiting to be served food.

“I could cause a distraction,” he offered, shocked to find that was almost enjoying himself. This little repartee was something like the camaraderie of a fellow soldier, and apparently whatever made Shepard trust this woman made Garrus trust her as well.

“Trust me, I’ve tried,” Marina muttered before finally starting into her meal.

Turn-about was fair-play, and Garrus was curious.

“Where is your family?” he asked after she finished chewing what looked to be a miserable bite.

“I was born on Earth, but I guess my family is here now. My parents died long before the Reaper War, and I was a spoiled only child who went to the best university they could afford. And look where that landed me: in a place where I can’t even put dressing on my salad without one of the RDNs telling me how much sugar there is a tablespoon of vinaigrette.” She paused and then looked wistfully toward the station she had gotten the salad from. “It is a lot of sugar,” she ground out, as if to convince herself the meal was worth it before she continued to eat.

Garrus went back to eating in amiable quiet as he looked around the room. There was a table nearby where a handful of salarians, a couple humans, and two asari were conversing loudly about some recently published study. He was able to make out that the study had been about cell decay, but that was all he could parse out from between a million different acronyms strung together at a frankly incomprehensible rate.

The cafeteria also contained a number of patients, too. There was a table of children which caught Garrus’ eyes. They were boisterously eating and talking, much of it at the same time, but sitting amongst several older kids, sat the drell child Garrus had seen earlier was there.

“Why child psychology?” Garrus asked after a long hesitation. It was probably too personal of a question, but the more he thought back to how scared the drell had been, he began to suspect that maybe he knew why Marina had chosen such a fraught field.

“Children are just… adults who aren’t old yet,” Maria explained patiently, occasionally motioning around with her fork. “They’re fascinating. Resilient. When I was a kid, I wanted people to treat me like an adult, and once I realized I was interested in psychology, I figured I could do a better job with kids, respecting them and treating them like small adults, than a lot of the old scabs at the university could.”

“Any insights?” he asked, mostly in jest.

But Marina seemed to seriously consider his question, even pausing and looking him directly in the eyes for a moment. He could see her thoughts whirring behind her brown eyes, and he wondered what exactly she was considering.

“Have you heard of Kintsugi?”

The word translated phonetically, as there was evidently no turian equivalent, so Garrus shook his head.

“It’s a Japanese art form. Repairing broken pottery by piecing it back together with gold. It’s beautiful. It’s not that pottery should have been broken in the first place, but… broken things can be fixed and still be beautiful.”

The gaze she had locked onto him was intense, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she meant something by it. This wasn’t just some vague comment about Shepard, either, as far as Garrus could tell. It was more like she was seeing too much in him, looking more into his mental state than he wanted anyone to. Garrus was not sure why that scared him, but it most definitely did, so he found himself scrambling to change the topic. This panic found him gesturing with his head toward the drell child.

“Is he a patient of yours?”

“Hmm? No. He has the earliest onset case of Kepral’s Syndrome in the galaxy. I’ve seen him a few times, to make sure he’s doing alright, but he has a good prognosis here, a strong support system, and has a number of friends among the other children here.”

Garrus noted that Marina was avoiding names, something she was assuredly very adept at after years of working in the medical field. This was all probably already more information than he was supposed to know, but he was getting the impression that as long he as didn’t go shouting what he learned from the rooftops, no one cared what he knew so long as he was helping Shepard.

Which brought Garrus to a different tack of thought.

“Shepard said that three children were killed in the raid,” he ventured, and from the shadow that fell over Marina’s face, he knew the answer to the question he hadn’t yet asked before he even finished his sentence.

"Deaths aren’t uncommon here,” Marina deflected. “We take a lot of extreme cases that wouldn’t be accepted anywhere else, because no one wants to skew their statistics. But we don’t care about the statistics. We care about the people.”

“I’m sorry,” Garrus offered, almost wishing he hadn’t brought this up, because it clearly still hurt.

“One of them had just gotten here,” Marina said softly, officially abandoning what was on her plate, which was still the vast majority of what she had served herself.

“I hadn’t even had a chance to do the initial psychiatric intake. Dr. Nwosu had to finish her physical exam before I could do anything. Standard procedure.”

There wasn’t any secret meaning behind what the doctor was saying, Garrus determined quickly. There were no metaphors in the form of ancient art, just a stream of consciousness. It was pretty clear from the distracted way she was rambling that she probably had not talked to anyone about what happened.

“Dr. Nwosu was Shepard’s doctor, right? The one who died?”

“She was shot trying to get the raiders away from the terminal. We managed to stabilize her initially, but the trauma she sustained left her braindead. And for all of the researchers and doctors here… we had no solutions.”

Marina let out a small sigh, and her eyes betrayed the fact that she genuinely mourned her coworker.

"You knew each other well?” Garrus asked.

“We’d been coworkers for nearly twenty years. We didn’t get along spectacularly, but she was good at her job, and we at least respected each other in the last decade. She was a by-the-rules woman, which made certain aspects of my life quite difficult, but she cared about the patients, and that was what mattered. And in the end, that was what she died for, the patients.”

And for the last time, Garrus asked the question he needed the answer to, because none of the pieces before him fit at all. They might as well have been fragments of completely different guns he was supposed to jam together to make a into rifle for all he understood.

“What _exactly_ happened?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy another longer chapter, because I have no self-control!


	14. Parallax

**0300: Raiders boarded station. On the hour, not an estimation. Most likely an intentional decision, since it was the middle of the night shift. **

**0301: Raiders exited shuttle, five in total. Three humans, one batarian, one asari. Heavily armed. **

**0301: Head of security shot and killed at the first airlock by one of the human raiders.**

**0301: Emergency alert protocols initiated. **

**0303: Raiders break passed second airlock doors, which had been sealed, and enter atrium.**

**0303: Asari raider kills atrium secretary with biotics.**

**0303: Security surveillance system shut down from atrium desk.**

**0311: Raiders break sealed door to eastern wing.**

**0312-0316: Visually unaccounted for; one tech, two nurses, and one member of security killed during this period.**

**0317-0321: Raiders enter shared pediatric room 181 according to retrieved door logs. In this time, two human children (4 yo and 8 yo) and one salarian child (2 yo) are killed.**

**0322: Raiders enter nearby office and begin to bypass security to hack into records. **

**0324: Raiders successfully begin uploading unknown document to unknown server. **

**0327: Dr. Nswosu is killed trying to stop process.**

**0327: Firefight occurs, instigated by Shepard. **

**0329: All five raiders dead, but unknown files already uploaded and successfully deleted.**

The timing was the first thing Garrus had begun to eke out of Marina, and then he referred to what little security footage there was from the beginning of the raid, so he could to fill in the finer points of her story.

What the cameras has managed to capture, before they were shut off, was of high quality, so it gave Garrus a clear line of site on all of the raiders at least a couple of times per person. It didn’t take a genius to see that this was some ragtag group. When they entered combat with the head of security, there was no strategy, just a messy few seconds of bloodshed. This wasn’t some paramilitary group, not with that lack of coordination. If anything, they seemed like a rag-tag group of mercenaries kitted out far above their deserved paygrade.

The asari, who appeared to be at least tentatively in charge of the group, had a full set of armor from Kassa Fabrications, and it wasn’t their cheapest offering, either.

Other than that, the recordings provided little. These were two-bit mercenaries-turned-raiders, enticed with a mysteriously handsome sum of money to do a quick job. It would have been worth the money, too, had Shepard not been aboard the station. Even without her armor and a rifle, massively outnumbered, definitely massively medicated, she had taken down the five of them within two minutes. When he had assured her earlier than it didn’t matter whether it was one shot or six that brought them down, he hadn’t just been consoling her. Regardless of how good her aim was now, at no more innocents had died, and that was all that really mattered. To both of them.

There wasn’t more that could be gleaned from the recordings, so Garrus tracked down some of the nurses who had been on shift that night. Unfortunately, that meant waking up a number of very tired and very frustrated people, but the moment they saw him, they had immediately been more than happy to answer his questions. Even in C-Sec, he’d never had a case where so many people wanted to talk to him, so it was a pleasant turn of events when he was actually being offered a good bit of information from every witness, despite the fact that he was cutting into their precious little time to themselves.

One human nurse, who was quick to insist that she was still just out of her internship, so she wouldn’t be much help, had mentioned that Dr. Nwosu had been with a tech before the facility went on alert.

“He was real shaken up about it. We all keep telling him to see one of the psychiatrists. It would be free! But he just hasn’t,” she had explained.

Garrus thanked her and set to ruining one final person’s day of sleep. The tech lived near where Garrus was rooming, and after only a single knock on the door, it had been answered by a young man who was fully dressed in a casual outfit, like he had been dressed already, so it was pretty clear he hadn’t been sleeping.

“You’re the detective?” the tech asked, stepping aside to let Garrus into the room, as if he had been expecting him.

“Yeah,” Garrus only half-lied. It wasn’t worth trying to explain the fact that he had no actual authority here, really. Besides, if that assumption was what kept people complying with his questioning and poking around, he wasn’t keen on letting it get out that he had no legal right to be doing anything that he was.

“What do you want to know?” the human asked after sitting down at a small table in the room and motioning for Garrus to sit opposite to him. The table was piled with old-fashioned, paper textbooks, as well as a datapad, which was still open and displaying some sort of dense research paper, possibly the one that had been argued over in the cafeteria.

“You want something to drink?” the tech asked anxiously. “I’ve got…”

He looked around, nearly frantic, before frowning and realizing, “I only have levo.”

“It’s alright…”

“Hao,” the human supplied.

Hao was young, Garrus noted. He was probably in his early twenties, and he was definitely younger than Garrus was when he had first met Shepard. At his age, Garrus’ life had been a mess, literally and physically, so he was genuinely impressed that despite his youth, the tech appeared very well-organized. There was very little out of place in the small room besides his bed sheets and blankets which were twisting together, so he had at least tried to sleep at some point.

“I was told you were with Dr. Nwosu the night that she died.”

Hao looked into the air over Garrus’ shoulder and let out a sharp breath before giving a slow nod.

“She was an amazing doctor. She knew every protocol and treatment, and she made sure we all knew what we were doing. Working with her was an honor. Havenwood won’t be the same without her. She’d been here longer than nearly anyone else, and when the alarms went off, she didn’t hesitate. We were in the western wing with a patient, and she just… took off. It took a while to bypass all the lock-down protocol, but we just followed the carnage.”

“You went with her?” Garrus asked.

“If Dr. Nwosu charged into a fire, I would have been right behind her, and I wouldn’t have asked why. She always knew what she was doing, and… we care about the patients here. And they were in the peds unit…”

It was here that Hao’s attempts to remain stoic failed. He blinked rapidly a couple of times to keep tears from falling before admitting,

“None of us knew the kids were dead until we started looking at the bloody footprints. We were so focused on getting them off the terminal that we didn’t notice… We thought they’d been in the office the whole time. And then one of the human patients… I don’t know where she got a firearm… just came out of nowhere. I was trying to get Dr. Nwosu help, and then all of them were dead.”

Hao was very clearly on the brink of breaking down, with how his hands had set to clutching at his thighs and the way his voice was cracking, and Garrus found that as much as he wanted to press about “the human patient,” who was assuredly Shepard, he knew it wasn’t worth it, not to this young man. Even if Marina was right, and Garrus had to talk to Shepard directly about it, it was better than making Hao recall that night any more than he already had. 

“I’ve had patients die before. It happens here, with the cases we take, but I was covering a shift for my friend… I wasn’t even supposed to be there. And I couldn’t do anything for her. But… there was so much blood, and Dr. Nwosu just kept crawling toward them, like she could stop them while choking on her own blood, and…”

The young man was nearly gasping out what he was saying, looking as frightened now as he surely had in the moment everything had happened.

“Hao,” Garrus interrupted gently, “you’re safe.”

Hearing his name brought the tech out of it, at least a bit. After a second of collecting himself, Hao leaned back into his chair and let out a heavy breath which shuddered through his entire frame.

These were symptoms Garrus had seen time and time again, since the war had ended. Civilian, soldier, it didn’t matter. The whole galaxy had seen horror. And Hao was exhibiting the same signs that Garrus had come to associate with PTSD, the lack of sleep, the reliving of the moment. But Garrus was no doctor, and Hao needed help, even if he didn’t need an armchair diagnosis. He was young, he had a whole life ahead of him. He was working at a premier medical facility, he needed treatment so he wouldn’t throw his potential away.

Was he projecting with that worry? Yeah, that didn't take a psychologist to see.

But Garrus had already trashed what he had a long time ago. The least he could do was make sure someone else didn’t do the same thing out of pride or uncertainty.

“What you saw was awful. You can’t sleep, and Nurse Song is worried, too. You should talk to someone,” Garrus suggested gently, but he could still hear Shepard’s nearly-snide remark about CBT not being able to fix her echoing around in his head.

But just because she was convinced it wouldn’t work didn’t mean it wouldn’t help him.

And because Garrus himself had avoided talking to anyone, and because Shepard had been so convinced it wouldn’t help her, he fully expected the same resistance from Hao. Garrus was wrong, though, and happy to be wrong, as Hao just frowned and paused.

“Eunji talked to you?”

“She mentioned you might be able to help me understand what happened. She also mentioned you had been taking it hard. Understandably.”

Hao let a small, sad smile twitch at the corners of his mouth, but he seemed to have actually taken something to heart, which was a miracle as far as Garrus was concerned. He wasn’t sure what was different. May because Hao worked in medical, he was willing to turn to other medical professionals. Maybe he was young enough that he wasn’t convinced he was stuck with the hand he was dealt. Maybe he just wasn’t as damned stubborn as Shepard was.

Whatever the reason for it was, Garrus was grateful that at least one person involved in this whole mess might be willing to take the steps to get better.

Talking was going to help Hao, but not here and not with some washed up turian who had been happy to watch his life implode around him, so Garrus rose from his chair and inclined his head.

"Let me know if you remember anything more. Or if you just want to talk” he offered, genuinely meaning it, because it was those sort offers that meant maybe Hao would reach out to more people.

Hao nodded, but as the door slid open, and Garrus took one step out of the room into the common area of Hao’s room-cluster, the human asked a question which stopped Garrus in his tracks.

“Have you…. Have you figured out why they shot those kids?”

Garrus felt pressure against his palms and looked down to see that he had turned his talons inward, in a fist, and he certainly hadn’t been planning on doing that.

He was angry. He was agitated. He felt helpless.

Because he wished he had an answer, wished that he had already made sense of this mess, but he hadn’t gotten anywhere and wasn’t sure what he could even do to solve it.

He had guesses, sure. Why kill some kids nearby where you’re supposed to be stealing information? Because they heard plans or saw a face. But everyone involved in those missing minutes was dead, and even if Garrus was right, and it was all just fucked up coincidence and bad luck, Hao didn’t need to hear that now.

“When I figure it out, I’ll tell you,” Garrus promised.

Closure was what Garrus had needed, and even when getting it had actually been worse than living the rest of his life like he was just slowly running out of oxygen, at least some part of him had reached an understanding. He didn’t have to pretend that Shepard had loved him, now, right? And that was freeing? It was a good thing, to know the truth, even if a lie or his fantasies had been happier?

But this wasn’t about him, so Garrus asked his final question just in the name of thoroughness.

“Is there anyone else I should talk to? I’ve spoken with Dr. Santos and some of the nurses.”

“Have you talked to that patient? The one who had the gun?” Hao asked. “She was trying to talk the raiders down when we got there, but when Dr. Nwosu went down…It was a bloodbath.”

Shepard’s fights weren’t normally messy, at least not compared to what was left when Jack was done with a person. A headshot was gory, sure, but it wasn’t like the entirety of a person was pulverized with Shepard’s single shot. But the place had reeked of blood, and Shepard had said it took her a whole clip. So a bloodbath was probably completely accurate, even if it was hard to imagine the woman he knew at the center of it all.

And when he had asked why she was doing this, she said it was because she wouldn’t be helpless again, and what did that even mean? It hadn’t been a real answer.

Marina had mentioned that he should ask Shepard the questions he had, and, Spirits, there was nothing Garrus wanted to do less. It would be prying things from her that would only hurt both of them.

But what had Shepard even expected to happen? That she could use him and his knowledge and then just kick him out? That she could get him to help and then ask no real questions? If she believed any of that, then she didn’t know anything about him. If she had ever really known him, she had to know that he wouldn’t be able to stay personally uninvolved

So, no, he hadn’t talked to the one person who probably knew the most about the raid, and he definitely didn’t want to.

“I’ll talk to her,” he promised more for Hao's benefit than his own, “and in the meantime, take care of yourself.”

“As best as I can, sir,” was Hao’s honest answer.

It didn’t sit right, not at first, and Garrus had no idea what until stepped into the hallway. He’d said more or less that exact thing to Ternian a few days ago. And he hadn’t meant a word of it.

But Hao was young, promising. He had people who cared about him and a support system waiting for him free of charge, he just needed to reach out and use it. So he wanted Hao to mean it.

Not only all that, but if there were going to be any serious answers to be found, he was going to have to talk to Shepard.

If he was going to walk, then now was the time. She hadn’t been helping him, he hadn’t been finding any leads, and if he wanted to leave now, no one would argue it was unreasonable. But he couldn’t, not now that he had met Marina and Hao and seen the grateful expressions as people passed him in the halls. He was sucked in deep, and that left literally only one option: a confrontation.

At least talking to Hao had given him some choice information. First of all, at least as far as Hao new, Shepard was a patient. He had already suspected she wasn’t just anonymously drug seeking, but Hao had confirmed that. From everything he had heard about Dr. Nwosu, too, it didn’t seem like she was the sort of person to entertain a user who was just manipulating her for a high. Whatever was wrong with her, it wasn’t just her own doing.

Earlier, Garrus had searched for Shepard’s name on a whim, and of course nothing had come up. He had assumed that if she was in the system, she had locked her own file or used a different name. After all, she had had the administrative access first.

Garrus hissed a sigh to himself as he walked into the atrium, which was now finally starting to be repaired by members of the janitorial staff who paid him no mind as he reluctantly made his way to the northern wing.

He needed to talk to Shepard, really talk to her, and even if it was high time he leveled the playing field, Garrus knew the whole conversation was about as good an idea as a house in an Invictus jungle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, we’re finally kicking the next part of the plot into motion! I really appreciate kudos and absolutely adore comments! I just hit over 55,000 words on the unedited document, so that was a fun event that I celebrated in an airport while hoping no one was reading over my shoulder.


	15. Silence as a Rule

_“Shepard?” Garrus called into her cabin._

_Shepard had boarded the Normandy with a brave face, pretending she had not just watched all of Thessia in the process of being ripped apart, pretending that she had not broken at least two ribs, pretending that she had not once again been bested by Cerberus. She had dressed down, cleaned her rifle and armor, and then left to her cabin without saying anything more than a few words to anyone._

_That had been hours ago, now, and no one had heard from the Commander. _

_"Shepard?” he repeated._

_There was no response._

_As Garrus made his way into the cabin, dimly lit by only the backlights on the empty fish tank, he could hear uneven breathing from further in the room. _

_“Arison?” he asked once he walked down the stairs and finally caught sight of her. _

_She was sitting on the couch with her back to the door, wearing her casual uniform, her hair down, her knees drawn up to her chest._

_"Should I leave?” _

_“No,” she whispered quickly, finally bringing her nearly-grey eyes to his own. _

_He had never seen her cry while awake before, and the sight felt impossibly wrong. She could take any amount of pain and not bat an eye. She could witness the worst of horrors and grimly soldier on, but now her face and eyes were reddened, and there was not a single cell in his body that did not want to help her._

_Awkwardly, Garrus sat next to her on the couch, not particularly comfortable on the very human furniture. He had expected her to lean on him, but she simply remained still as a corpse except for the occasional sob of a breath. _

_He was no expert on humans, but there were some things that were universal to sapient species, and he knew grief when he saw it. _

_"Earth?” he asked softly._

_Arison let out a halting breath._

_“Mindoir.”_

_She didn’t speak about Mindoir, that was a rule. If anyone brought it up, it was ignored or blown off. She only referenced it after her night terrors, and Garrus’ research into what had happened had only given him the most general idea of what she had experienced. There were themes to her memories of Mindoir, he knew, fire being one of them. And a lot of Thessia had been aflame._

_“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked gently._

_He knew Palaven was burning but knowing was very different from seeing first-hand. Where he had been born was leveled, but at least he hadn’t had to see it in person, and he was grateful for that in some sick way. _

_He knew Solana and his father were safely off planet, but what had they seen? Their escape had taken some weight off of Garrus’ shoulders. _

_"I don’t,” Arison said with brutal finality, but after a moment’s pause, she released the tension in at least part of her body, enough to let her torso sag against her knees._

_The position she was impossible for a turian, and it looked uncomfortable. Even imagining trying to contort himself like that was unpleasant. He wanted to touch her, but he wasn’t sure where. A hand on her shoulder seemed too distant. A hand on her lower back seemed too intimate. So Garrus brought a hand out to rest above the place between her shoulder blades. Not touching her, not yet. _

_"Do you want me to leave?” he asked again._

_He didn’t want to leave, but she had never let him see her like this before. He didn’t know what she needed or even what she wanted from him right now. _

_"Stay.” _

_She trusted no one else to see this, and this request, not order, was an honor in some strange way. This human without a cowl or carapace or spurs, Garrus thought as he looked at her nearly-silent break down, was a better turian than he would ever be._

_Though Arison did not move from her tightly held fetal position, she did not shy away from Garrus’ touch when he finally, slowly, tenderly, let his hand settle against her back._

Garrus had been intending to walk straight into Marina’s office and get through the whole affair as quickly as possible. The momentum of his plan assured that he didn’t grind to a halt and actually think about the outcomes that actually awaited, none of which were particularly good.

As he made his way through the northern wing, he was stopped in his tracks by the red message projected across the door to Marina’s office which read, “In Session. Please do not disturb.”

Garrus hesitated there for a moment, mid-stride, with only one elegant word on his mind.

Fuck.

He couldn’t waste this momentum. And that meant he needed to put that energy on hold for however long it would take for Marina’s appointment to end, since he was not about to interrupt some kid getting help because he was a coward for not wanting to deal with his emotions.

Slowly, very slowly, Garrus made his way to lean against the wall near the door, and after a moment of counting ceiling tiles, he decided he needed to at least pretend to be productive. Pulling up the secure server on his omnitool, he punched in Caitus’ name in the archived messages and began to furiously read through anything the turian had put his name to.

Caitus was a mystery in and of himself, really, Garrus considered as he scrolled down to where he had left off skimming previously. When he had first looked Caitus up on the extranet, he had seen the turian’s white clan markings, which were not common, not really, but they were striking. The family wasn’t particularly well-known, either, and Caitus seemed to be the only one in recent history to have made a name for himself. There were a number of accolades to his name, particularly regarding how he had served in the First Contact War. Caitus bore no scars from his time in the military, and from what Garrus could get from the photos, Caitus held himself like the perfect turian veteran, stoic with impeccable posture and a grim expression.

The physical image of Caitus lined up relatively well with what Garrus could parse of the man’s personality after flipping through document after document of meetings. He was to-the-point, blunt, loyal.

The transcription Garrus pulled up next was about the rate of taxation post-war, which was drier than anything Garrus had ever had the misfortune of reading before, but in it, he found a comment Caitus made which rankled him.

**Ternian: If we need to increase taxes, we need to increase them universally. Otherwise, this won’t be received well.**

**Sparatus: With all due respect, General, the Primarch’s plans for rebuilding requires trillions more credits than we currently have. We need to increase the tax rates, or we’ll be putting our next four generations into debt.**

**Ternian: With all due respect, Councilman, I didn’t disagree with raising the taxes. I disagreed with taxing only off-world turians. **

**Petral: It’s an incentive, General, for people to return to Palaven. We need to repopulate, and we need a central location of strength. Palaven is the best option.**

**Polus: I agree with the general. Not only in the interest of fairness, but also because consider if even a million turians move to Palaven to avoid increased taxes, we would lose massive revenue. And if we then raised taxes on Palaven in order to rectify this deficit, there would be a furor. If we increase taxes, which I’m not convinced that we should, our people are struggling enough as it is, the taxes need to be universally levied. **

**Petral: A two percent increase would provide massive revenue with minimal impact on the average turian. **

**Oremnion: Even if it was a hardship, if the Hierarchy needs the taxes, it is every turian’s responsibility to give whatever is necessary.**

**Polus: Colonel, while I respect your stance on this, there are some turians starving right now. I’m not convinced that increasing taxation will benefit our most desperate. Levying tariffs on non-turian imports, however, would certainly—**

**Sparatus: That’s fine coming from the owner of Palaven’s largest vanadium refinery. **

**Polus: This has nothing to do with—**

**Oremnion: I don’t often agree with Sparatus, but—**

**Ternian: What if we increased taxes one percent universally and increased tariffs on non-turian imports by one percent? We can split the difference of—**

**Petral: Only if Councilman Polus agrees to a two percent increase on his personal taxes.**

**Ternian: This pissing contest isn’t helping anyone--**

**Polus: If it means I can help our most desperate citizens, then yes! Increase my personal tax rate if it makes you happy. I would be proud to assist our people in whatever way it takes.**

**Oremnion: Then are we in agreement? A universal tax increase of one percent with a one percent increase on non-turian imports, with the concession that Councilman Polus’ personal taxes increase two percent total?**

**Ternian: It looks like it.**

**Sparatus: Then with this tax increase, what exactly will we be spending the revenue on? What are the parameters for reconstruction? **

**Polus: I would suggest we tier the funding based on population statistics. Planets with the most population get the most money for restructuring and assistance.**

**Petral: What about rebuilding on colony planets that were wiped out? We can’t afford to lose those resources, and if we don’t populate those planets, we will lose them.**

**Oremnion: We focus the funds on merit. We create an application process.**

**Sparatus: No, no applications. Imagine sifting through that data. We would need to spend half the new income on hiring staff to read through them all.**

**Ternian: What about a three-quarters split? One quarter goes toward repopulating and reconstructing lost colonies, and the rest goes toward established populations of turians?**

**Polus: That seems amenable.**

**Oremnion: Define 'established populations of turians'.**

**Ternian: What are you talking about? I mean populations of turians that are consolidated in one area and need assistance from the Hierarchy.**

**Oremnion: Including the Citadel?**

**Ternian: What kind of question is that, Colonel? **

**Sparatus: The colonel is right. The Citadel and any shared colonies should have to impose their own taxes.**

**Ternian: While we still tax them? And they receive no benefits from the Hierarchy?**

**Oremnion: Anything paid for by the Hierarchy should only benefit turians. We don’t have the funds to be humanitarian, General. This is an issue of practicality, I’m sure you understand.**

On its own, the statement from Caitus wasn’t anything more than off-color, but it left a bad taste in Garrus’ mouth, nonetheless. Ternian had mentioned on Taetrus that Caitus was part of the old guard, and now Garrus was reminded of the sentiments which some turians still harbored regarding their role galaxy. Regardless of Caitus’ personal history and beliefs, the comment was still not something acceptable in a professional capacity.

Before Garrus could dredge any further through the debate, he saw a nurse stop at the other side of the door out of the corner of his eye. The human did not seem interested in asking Garrus any questions, so he was either waiting to speak with Marina or was waiting to escort the patient after their session.

Before Garrus could read more than another page of the tedious transcript, which had mostly devolved into a very thinly veiled series of personal attacks, the red projection across the door faded away, and the doors opened to the office, revealing Marina and a small, human girl holding the doctor’s hand.

“Izzy did very well today,” Marina complimented to the nurse without even a glance toward Garrus.

The little girl drew Garrus’ gaze, with her dried, tear-streaked face and her small hands clutched around a little, stuffed varren which looked like it had seen years of service. She did not look particularly upset at the moment, but from how tightly she was grasping at Marina, it had been a rough session.

Marina gently handed the child over to the nurse, who was now beaming a proud smile at the little girl.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” the doctor asked.

The little girl raised her brown eyes from the nurse who was holding her close to Marina and then to Garrus.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed, though her eyes lingered on Garrus as she spoke.

Her expression bordered on fear. Perhaps she had heard what had happened in the raid. Perhaps she had seen some part of it herself. Maybe she even knew the children who had been killed. For the second time now, Garrus felt guilt for something he couldn’t control; the young drell had thought that Garrus was there for the same thing that this human child seemed to be suspicious of.

"Come on, Izzy,” the nurse encouraged before gently leading the little girl away.

As the two walked further down the hall, Garrus could hear the nurse asking very gentle and quiet questions about how the girl was feeling.

“She’s a brave one,” Marina commented, her eyes still on the child, just as Garrus’ were. “They all are here, really.”

Garrus wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but asked, “Will she be okay?”

Marina pursed her lips.

“We all do our best here. Only time will tell. Some things never heal, and then all we can do is work with what’s left.”

After her moment of philosophy, Marina gestured back to her office and asked, “Do you need something?”

“I guess… I guess I need to talk to Shepard,” Garrus ground out, “assuming you won’t answer my questions.”

He wanted this out. It was cowardly and definitely a request that she break at least several galactic laws, but it would be infinitely more pleasant than trying to get a straight answer out of Shepard. 

“I already answered your questions, Garrus,” Marina said with a slow shake of her head. She almost sounded disappointed, which hurt worse than a punch to the gut for some reason. He hadn’t thought that he wanted her approval, but apparently, he had.

And Garrus wanted to counter her. Shepard wasn’t the only one getting hurt in all this mess.

“Then just take me to her. Let’s get this over with.”

With every passing moment, Garrus began to realize more and more that this was a breaking point. Either she was going to refuse to help him understand, in which case Garrus would go straight back to his room, pack his things, and get a ride back to Eirene. He would keep whatever was left of his PTO to never use, and he would pretend that none of this had happened.

Or...

Or Shepard would do something he didn’t think she was capable of.

And the latter would be far more painful than simply deciding that the woman he loved was dead and what was left was some strange walking corpse he wanted nothing to do with.

“Does she know you’re coming?” Marina asked with a calculating expression on her face.

“No. Do you want to tell her?”

“No. It’s probably better this way,” Marina said cryptically. “Give me a moment, I promised I would give her a few more files.”


	16. Little and Late

As Marina disappeared back into her office, the door did not shut behind her, so Garrus was given a clear view of the room, which looked absolutely unrecognizable from the mess Shepard had made of it a few days ago. Now, he could clearly see a well-organized desk and walls filled with old-fashioned storage devices. The least organized area was the wall behind Marina’s desk where dozens and dozens of actual, physical drawings were plastered. They were obviously made by children, and since none of them had names on them, Garrus assumed these were made by patients, not some as-of-yet-unmentioned kids the doctor had.

Marina opened one of the drawers of the filing cabinet and rifled through it. The drawer was absolutely full of paper, and everything was labeled, apparently, since she was rifling passed a number of tabs in her search.

Once she had gathered a small library of files in her arms, Garrus broached a question he had just started to realize he even had.

“Why so much paper?”

Almost everything the Hierarchy did was digital. Almost anything anyone did was digital. From the most secure of work in intergalactic government to simple notes made by civilians were made on datapads and terminals and omnitools. Handwriting was a thing of the distant past to just about everyone other than historians, as far as Garrus had ever seen.

Marina looked up from what she was doing with an odd expression that Garrus did not know how to place.

“Because I can destroy these,” was her only explanation.

It only took a split second for the stoic determination behind Marina’s eyes to make sense.

You could delete datafiles, sure, but nothing ever truly was gone. There were hackers and systems back-ups and servers dedicated to copying information, so the chances that you could ever completely destroy something, wipe it out from all existence, was a statistical improbability at best.

Marina started out of her office, a stack of about six very full files in her arms, and Garrus was halted in his steps for a moment as he imagined what would be lost if a fire consumed the office. Twenty or more years of information would simply… disappear. All that would be left was whatever Marina could remember.

It was a strange thought, but it had power behind it. But what really froze Garrus was the fact that Marina had considered a situation where she would need to destroy her work, and she thought that situation was be real enough to retained physical paperwork, despite the fact that it definitely at least doubled her workload.

The door shut and locked behind her, and the doctor took the lead without comment. Where Garrus faltered, however, was as they exited the northern wing. He expected they would head right, toward the living facilities, but instead, Marina unfalteringly made her way to the left, towards the eastern wing.

Apparently, Shepard had set up her HQ near where everything had happened, which made sense in its own way, and was a relief, too. He didn’t want to corner her in her room or something. He’d seen plenty of times that backing Shepard into a corner was a great way to get your ass handed to you.

Marina continued passed the office where Shepard had killed the raiders, which was now locked, passed the room in which the three children had died, which also locked, and then to an elevator near the back of the hall. The doctor got in and pressed the button for the third floor.

“Is this pediatric, too?” Garrus asked once the doors slid open to reveal a hallway decorated the same austere pastels that the lower level of the wing was.

“When we first opened, it was only the third floor,” Marina explained. “Since then, we’ve had to expand.”

She didn’t need to say that the war was what changed everything, Garrus knew that. Everyone knew that. There were more orphans across the galaxy than ever before, that was just a fact, and Garrus wasn’t naïve. He had seen reports and statistics about the war’s impacts on the kids still alive. And if they didn’t have parents anymore, they needed some place like Havenwood.

Marina came to a stop at a door not far from the elevator.

His subvocals humming in confusion, Garrus glanced down the hallway and back to the elevator. He had assumed Shepard had centered her work so it would be near where everything had happened, but this room was just about as far from the scene as some of the closest living facilities in the western wing were.

If she was requisitioning any location to work out of, why not one nearest to what had happened? This was just… some room in the pediatric wing, not any more strategically placed than anywhere else really.

Before Garrus could ask any number of the questions he had, Marina pressed a small screen on the wall, and a chime emitted from inside the room. Moment after slow moment passed, and with each passing second, Garrus began to more seriously consider just leaving. These last moments of tension in waiting were not only unbearable, but he already could tell something was wrong. Something was off, despite the fact that Marina did not seem to be bothered by the location or wait at all. If anything, she seemed to be expecting it.

What Garrus had expected was simple: they would find Shepard in a retrofitted hospital room which would assuredly be as much a mess as what she had made of Marina’s office. It would be a depersonalized and neutral location to engage in. Maybe Shepard would be having another good day, like she had been on the Citadel. Maybe she would barely seem to recognize him. The latter was what he had been secretly hoping for. It would make them on equal footing, at least; she would not know him, and he would not know her.

What he saw when the doors slid open, however, left him reeling.

In front of him was Shepard, exactly where he would have expected to see her, but she looked nothing like she ever had before.

While she was wearing the long-sleeved and high collared shirts he had grown accustomed to seeing her in, she had rolled up the sleeves to reveal completely mottled skin where there had clearly been tissue implants, which traced across every part of her arms at random. Her first two buttons were undone as well, and Garrus could clearly see that the mottling apparently covered her entire body. The moment that she processed who was before her, however, Garrus watched in morbid fascination as she tried to twist one arm behind her slightly, but this movement could not hide her whitened knuckles which clenched the head of a cane, which she immediately pulled all of her weight off of.

Just from what he could see, the implants covered at least forty percent of her body, and there were few things which would require such extensive work: skinning, acid burning, or traditional fire burns.

Garrus remembered the macabre thought he had had just before reuniting with Shepard, that perhaps she had burned to ash, and he was breathing her in with every passing moment.

The Citadel had been a mess. Collapsed and charred and broken, and why had he thought that Shepard would have survived in any different a state? The metal and glass could be fixed with enough time and manpower and credits…

Worst of all was not the fact that now he could see exactly how much she had been hiding from him, but rather, the look of betrayal in her eyes as she stared at Marina. Then, worse yet was the way she refused to acknowledge that Garrus was there, as if she could pretend that he had not seen her vulnerable in front of a room which was clearly not just her HQ.

“I brought the papers you asked for. And a turian,” Marina half-joked in order to break the silence.

There was no quick response, but Garrus wasn’t concerned about the tension which was settling palpably into the air around them. No, his mind was racing at a mile a minute with nearly incoherent thoughts.

Cerberus had brought her back from a pile of tissue and tubes, and apparently, that had been a better starting point than whatever Shepard had been left with when she had ended the war.

She had been hiding this from him, had been trying from the first moment they had been reunited to pretend that she was fine. He had been mad, because she had seemed so unaffected, like she hadn’t suffered while he had.

From the way everyone had described her, Dr. Nwosu wasn’t like the type to entertain addicts.

Before Garrus could feel regret for what he had said in the bar on the Citadel, Shepard broke the tension with a curt, “You can just throw them there,” to Marina as she motioned to a leaning tower of files near the door.

It was only now that Garrus could rip his shocked gaze from Shepard to the area around her.

The room was large by hospital standards, but it had clearly been retrofitted to serve Shepard’s current rampage. The walls were covered in physical paper, and datapads were scattered about; the entire place looked like the state she had left Marina’s office in the other day. But his sneaking suspicions had been right. This wasn’t an office.

Surrounded by the incomprehensible piles of research, in the far left of the room, was a simple bed, made in the tight regulation style with sheets under the pillows and covers on top. It was the only controlled thing in the entire room. Most jarringly, there were still the clear touches that made this a pediatric room, with mint green and light blue accents and a white dresser, atop of which there were dozens and dozens of pill bottles.

While Garrus’ eyes were locked onto the pharmacy Shepard evidently owned, Marina gave her nearly cold retort.

“You know, I have spent countless hours for dozens of years charting flawlessly, and this is how you treat my science?”

She then stiffly held out the files, refusing to follow the suggestion given to her.

The two women stared at each other, neither giving an inch, until Garrus managed to pull himself out of his thoughts enough to numbly take the files from Marina’s grasp.

“I needed to ask you some questions about the raid,” he explained to diffuse the tension. That was what he had come here for. This was the breaking point.

This interruption had Shepard pausing, even if only for a moment.

He did not miss the way Shepard tensed, her whole body moving as it did when she thought things were about to turn to combat. She moved her cane further back, as if she hid it from view now, Garrus would not recall it had been there. Unhelpfully, and definitely intentionally, Marina turned away from the entire situation and began to head back toward the elevators with no indications that she expected Garrus to follow.

This had Garrus teetering on the edge of just letting loose all the things he wanted to say, that he needed to say. It was as if he was clutching onto the edge of a cliff with only seconds of strength left in his body.

“You could invite me in,” Garrus managed.

Shepard turned her back to him and walked into the room at a very slow and measure pace, still trying to angle her cane such that he would not see it.

This was another of her wordless commands, but this time, Garrus did not feel agitated by it like he had in his apartment. No, now he found himself dragged toward her as if she had her own gravitational pull, and he was just a satellite afloat in space.

There was a single chair in the room, and Shepard stood beside it, motioning with one hand for him to sit after pulling her sleeves back down to cover her once-charred flesh.

As Garrus made his way inside, the doors shut automatically behind him, but he barely noticed.

“You had questions?” Shepard prompted as the silent seconds dragged on like razor wire across skin.

Her hand slid downward, no longer a silent offer for him, as it settled onto the back of the chair. She tried to pass this movement off as if she was casually leaning, but it was clearer now than ever that she could not stand on her own for any period of time.

And she didn’t want him to know.

They were alone. She was trying to hide from him, but he could see everything. Why was she playing this charade still, when there was no audience but herself?

“I drew up a timeline. I wanted you to look over it. See if you agree.”

He could have just held out the files from Marina and made Shepard for once be the one to close the distance between them, but he didn’t have it in his heart to demand she prove her weakness to him. He didn’t know what he felt anymore, because it wasn’t anger, and it wasn’t pity, and it wasn’t anything, but it was everything.

Because he hurt, too, and he was willing to let her see that.

Garrus closed the austere distance between them but stopped before handing everything over.

"You should sit,” he ventured slowly.

Humans were so unlike turians in so many different ways, Garrus knew well by now, but humans had this strange way of communicating fury or disgust with an upturned lip, a snarl not unlike an animal. This was similar to what humans called a smirk, but the light in Shepard’s eyes betrayed the anger which assured this had offended her rather than amused her.

“Why?” she demanded.

It was a challenge, and she was trying to throw herself headlong into it. She wanted a fight. She was trying to lure Garrus into hurting her. As if they both weren’t drowning.

“Because you’re shaking,” was his very even, very controlled response.

“Because I’m weak?”

Her words were some strange mixture of a feint and an opening. She was bearing her neck, pointing to her jugular, reminding him of this frailty, and waiting for him to respond, and the aggression behind it all left Garrus as confused as frustrated.

He wouldn’t let her use him as a tool to hurt herself. She could do that well enough on her own, and he didn’t want to hurt her. He had never wanted to hurt her, so he bit out,

“No, because I’m not blind, Shepard.”

“You think I’m pathetic.”

Couldn’t she see what she was doing? Couldn’t she see that she had hurt him? That he was still hurting? That she had managed to absolutely destroy every inch of the dream that had kept him alive and barely functioning for five years?

“You should sit down,” he suggested once more.

“No!”

She was shouting to him. She was shouting to the world, denying every truth which surrounded her. He could see it in her eyes. She was living in a fractured existence where, if she pretended enough, her act would become reality, even to herself. Especially to herself.

“Yell it all you want; you still need to sit down.”

“You think I’m pathetic, Vakarian, say it! Tell me I’m weak!”

“Shepard. Sit. Down.”

“I don’t need to!” she yelled with violence, throwing all of her energy out of herself in one quick moment as her body stuttered forward with the sheer furor inside of her.

And then she froze, and his visor, pulling up software which he had installed long ago, for Shepard, only for Shepard, so he could monitor her during the end stages of her stim abuse, alerted him that her pulse was stuttering

Slowly, so slowly, the hand that was not on the back of the chair dropped to the seat, and she slid into the spot, still panting. Her heartrate was rapid, too rapid, and it was clear she was struggling to bring air into her lungs.

Her heart skipped another two beats, and her teeth started to chatter, and Garrus lunged forward, his hands moving of their own accord to brace her in the chair, as he would have five years ago, as if no time had passed in his mind, and he was still in love with her.

“What do you need?” he demanded as Arison’s her panting became more frantic and fear settled into him.

He couldn’t lose her again. He still lo—

“Blue bottle,” she gasped out, throwing one hand out toward the dresser.

Without thinking, Garrus rushed over and came face-to-face with the more than dozen bottles, all conveniently color-coded. In his desperation, he knocked over a handful, but soon he had the lid off, and he was kneeling as best he could despite his spurs in front of Arison. 

“How many?” he demanded as he dumped the contents of the bottle into his palm.

She held up two violently shaking fingers.

He rushed two of the pills into her hand, and without hesitation, she threw them into the back of her mouth and swallowed with a violence.

“Should I get Marina?”

Garrus was nearly already on his feet when Arison managed to get a hand out to him. This was not an order. This was, for once, a request.

“Please,” she started, her chattering teeth making the words almost incomprehensible. “Don’t leave.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos make the world go 'round! If you like what I'm doing, they're a great way to let me know!


	17. The Rifle and Coming Home

It took five minutes for the medicine to take effect, and in that time, neither of them said anything.

With each passing minute, her heart slowed a bit more, and her breathing finally evened out, and Arisonhadn’t let go of his hand, so once he had settled beside her, she rested their intertwined hands against her thigh.

Human hands were still strange to him even after all these years. Two too many fingers, thin, and so easily breakable. He had gotten used to one thing, though, and that was how exactly how Arison’s index finger wrapped around her trigger like she was born for it. That looked natural, somehow, despite the rest of her weird anatomy.

Shepard was nearly doubled over in her chair. She said nothing, just sat as still as she could with her whole body spasming uncontrollably on and off. The muscle contractions slowed within the first minute or so, and then her fingers, which were still intertwined with his own, stopped their tremoring. 

Her hands had shaken during her stim use, but those had been small and pretty much unnoticeable. These spasms were magnitudes greater, like her body was trying to fight off the worst cold it had ever experienced, but only in segments at a time. He could see every single small muscle in her hands as her fingers curled back and forth, and the worst part of all this? These were without a doubt Shepard’s hands. He would have recognized them if pressed, from the scarring and the way she held them. These were the hands of the woman who had saved his life, the hands of the woman who had promised to come back to him.

Her skin was hot, too hot for human, and as she slowly began to show signs of her symptoms leveling off, he expected her to pull away, so she could return to her act. She had done nothing but pull away, since she had shown up in his apartment… What? A week ago?

Her grip did not quite hurt him, but it was tight enough for him to know that it was intentional, that she actually wanted contact, even though she was still bent over, her lungs sucking in breath desperately, with her eyes were closed tightly.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t get Marina?” he ventured at a whisper, even though he didn’t want to leave her side. This was where he had wanted to be for so long. He had missed Arison, and he had spent five years wishing she was alive, and here she was, no longer behind a cracking façade, actually wanting him there.

Shepard only responded by tightening her grip on his hand.

He finally dared to raise his eyes to her face, to try to parse what she wasn’t willing to say, and he was shocked to see tears slowly running down her cheeks, despite the fact that she was closing her eyes as tightly as she could manage.

Something like anguish began to resonate through him. He had heard of the stages of grief, but it felt like he’d gone through them all out of order. Arison was dead, then she wasn’t, then she was, then she wasn’t again, and each time had hurt him just as badly as the last.

But this was Arison, here, now, and it wasn’t just her trying to be a figurehead.

So he couldn’t help himself from very, very gently using a talon to wipe the strange water off her face. Turians couldn’t cry, it was a biological impossibility unless the eye had been injured, and this human expression of pain or sorrow or sometimes even joy had never stopped seeming bizarre to him.

He expected her to push him away now, because this was an intimate gesture. He’d seen it in vids as something done in tender moments, and he had only done with for her once before. She had woken up next to him in her cabin from a night terror, physically trying to fight off someone who wasn’t there. Once she had realized it had been a dream, she had just started to sob. He had then done what he’d seen he was supposed to do with a partner who could cry, and he had gently wiped away her tears as she cried them. She had been receptive them, and he definitely hadn’t expected her to allow it now.

But she didn’t pull away. Instead, she took in a trembling breath and then slowly, slowly admitted, “You weren’t supposed to see this,” as if saying it could rewind time and keep her façade intact.

“Why?” he asked, but he already knew the answer.

She had been in this facility for long enough to be on a first-name basis with the doctors. She could barely walk on her own, and she had tried to hide that fact with everything she had. Her body was a testament to death, each inch of dermal transplant a macrocosmic cemetery.

The pieces of this puzzle were lining up grimly, and Garrus knew he was beginning to get why she had made the decisions she had. Even if she had hurt him more than he could probably ever say, at least he could understand some part of it now.

“I’m weak,” she snarled without bite, but her derision wracked through her whole frame.

She hated herself. Viscerally.

“I’m pathetic. I’m useless.”

Before Garrus could find the words to stop her, she bit out,

"I’m broken.”

With each syllable she spoke, with every drop of poison she spat, he could hear the disgust, the interminable shame, which she felt for herself. It was overwhelming, enveloping everything.

“Shepard,” Garrus began, though he had no idea what he was going to say.

He had missed her. The woman he loved had saved the world, and this was what was left after she had given everything. He wanted to tell her that she wasn’t any of the things she had just ground out, but he knew that just saying that wasn’t going to make her believe it.

"Arison…” he tried again.

This caught her attention, and she finally slid her eyes to his. They were red-tinged now, another strange, human thing, and in them, he saw everything she wanted to hide: the pain, the shame, the hatred. She was openly bearing at least some part of herself now, and, Spirits, it hurt just to glimpse.

“What happened?”

Because he needed to know. He needed to hear the truth he was sure he already understood.

And this time, she didn’t return his question with another, and even if she gave an answer now, it was decades displaced.

“I had just finished a soccer game. It had been early, and Mom had taken us back home for lunch. We were going to have soup or something, and everything was fine. I was setting the table for us. We had blue bowls. And then there were noises outside. Mom looked out the window and told me to take Ellie and hide. She had an old rifle, she was Alliance back in the day, where she met dad, and Ellie couldn’t even walk yet. Mom had the rifle, and she left the house, and I was begging her to stay, and Ellie was screaming… Just… screaming… She knew something was wrong, and then I heard more screaming outside of the house. I looked out, and… Mom was on the ground. She was trying to fight them off with just her hands, and one of them… He had a flamethrower. He just… stood in front of her, and I had Ellie, and I couldn’t help her, and they saw us… And I ran.”

She never spoke of Mindoir, as a rule, and Garrus now began to understand what exactly her night terrors had contained. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Arison at age eight, with her dark hair pulled back, like it always was, wearing a sports jersey. She looked just as grim as a child, in his mind, as she did now, but this image was halted as Garrus began to really process what she had said.

“Ellie?” he asked gently.

“My baby sister. Elissa. I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to keep her safe. Mom told me to. And I didn’t. They took her from me. They shot her, and then they grabbed me, and I was screaming and trying to get her...”

From the moment Arison began to explain, Garrus could only imagine Solana in the arms of this intense, young version of Arison. Solana was years younger than him, and she had been the best bet for anything good in the new Vakarian generation for a long time. She was impetuous at times, and Garrus had loved her for it. Neither of them was what their father wanted, and there was solidarity in that. She was funny and bright and had a future more promising than his had ever been.

And if his father had put him in charge of Solana, and Solana had died?

Spirits, silence as a rule had been hiding more than Garrus would ever have wanted to guess at. He couldn’t have guessed at it, really, he was beginning to realize.

“She had the most beautiful green eyes, Garrus,” Arison whispered, her own eyes locked onto their intertwined hands. “And blonde hair, just like Mom.” 

Garrus could imagine Arison’s little sister, but only barely, but more sinkingly, he could imagine how different Arison would have turned out had she been given anything resembling a normal childhood. What if she had actually had parents to walk her through life? What if she hadn’t always had to be the only person she could rely on? Would she have been able to do what she had without having gone through the mess she had?

Imagining a world in which Arison’s family had lived was increasingly strange, because Arison had always been a single entity in her own way. But what if he’d been having to worry about in-laws the same way she had been before the war had ended. She had been concerned about what Garrus’ father would think of her, fairly so, since he hadn’t ever seemed fond of the idea of Garrus being involved with a human. But she had said her mother and father were ex-Alliance. What would they have thought of her having a turian for a partner? And what if she had a little sister who would definitely have been exactly as much of a spitfire as Arison was?

And in spite of this parallel universe he was beginning to build, Garrus wanted to say something, anything, could ease her pain. But this was something that had haunted her for more than three decades now, and there was nothing anyone could ever say to make it better. No wonder Arison had been so upset about that boy on Earth. He was another child gone. In a flash of fire. As she watched, unable to do anything. Ash had told Garrus about it, when he had pressed, and she had said that she had never seen Shepard so cold as when they had had to leave Earth.

“The Citadel was burning,” she added after a long moment of silence.

He had known that. He had seen the scorched rubble they carted away from where the Catalyst had docked. And now he could not stop the impulse which had him gingerly rolling up her sleeve so he could see more of the extend of the burns. He could only reveal a couple more inches of her skin, but each inch was exactly as marred as he had thought he’d seen at a distance.

Now that he was closer, though, he could see where the dermal implants were fading into her older skin. There had been a scar on her arm, something she had gotten during their “suicide mission,” and it had once etched a thick, white line across a few inches of her forearm. Now, only the furthest corner of it remained, roughly running into a section of transplant.

Not really thinking, he brought a talon to trace over where the rest of the scar had been.

She couldn’t hear it, and Garrus only just noticed it himself, but sympathy was reverberating intensely through his subvocals.

“And why hide this?” he asked, his eyes still locked onto her marred skin. “I wanted you back more than anything. You had to have known that.”

He was sure that, now, in a way she could hear, his sorrow was evident enough.

"I chose to destroy the Reapers. I killed EDI. And the geth. I blew down the relays. And my implants…” And then she hesitated before tensing once more and coldly adding, “No one could see Commander Shepard like that.”

She had been alive in the rubble of the Catalyst, and her impossibly expensive Cerberus implants, which Miranda had been so proud to brag about, had fried in her brain. It made sense, really, but as Garrus realized more and more of exactly what Shepard had gone through, he felt sick.

“I would have helped you. I would have done anything,” he reiterated blindly, because imagining a world in which he had been notified by some medical center that Shepard was a live, a world in which he had been able to laugh hysterically at the fact that really nothing could kill her, where he would have gladly spent years helping her, was so much better than anything that had actually happened. Five years of his life had been spent in a grey, foggy, tired haze of depression, when he could have been with someone he loved, helping, doing something that would have mattered.

“No one could see me like that,” Arison hissed again.

Her hand tightened its grip in his own, and he could do nothing but squeeze back, trying to tell her without words that even if the five years of hollowness still hurt desperately, he didn’t blame her now. If she had wanted to hide, she had served the galaxy more than anyone else ever could have, so it was her right. But now? Now her pride was the only thing that stood between a real reunion, one where she didn’t immediately say, _It’s a mess in here, Garrus_.

Of course it was. Of course his apartment was a fucking mess, because he was a mess. She had left him a mess. What else could have happened? What other outcome in the universe could possibly have happened?

There was no world in which he would have just… had no body to bury and started a happy family on Palaven with a six-foot fence, 2.5 children, and a pet varren.

And if they were talking, like real adults…

“You hurt me, Arison. I loved you. I needed you.”

Arison nodded and finally angled her body toward his. Shakily, she lowered her head until their foreheads rested together, and Garrus drowned in the thought that it felt like coming home.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured as she leaned her weight into him. “I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was first playing Arison, the song "The Rifle" by Alela Diane reminded me very strongly of Mindoir. Also, sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that Arison is older than Shep is canonically. Not a lot, but a bit.


	18. Fall Into Place

“I’m sorry.”

The words had torn through him in the sweetest way, and it was all he could do not to tell her that she didn’t need to say it, because he knew that Arison hated being wrong and hated making mistakes. But he had needed her to say it, because he needed to know that she still cared about his feelings and that she regretted what had happened.

He couldn’t still love her if she hadn’t. But she said it out loud, that she was sorry.

And that meant that he didn’t have to pretend that he didn’t still love her after all this time.

Before he could begin to organize any of his thoughts into anything even vaguely coherent, Arison sagged forward, barely catching herself on her elbows, her head sliding off of Garrus’ forehead to rest against his cowl.

“I need to sleep,” she said, as if the realization shocked her.

Arison was not a short woman, not by human standards, but that didn’t mean that Garrus didn’t tower over her at seven feet. He had lifted her before, years ago, back when he hadn’t been able to see the exactly outline of her collarbones. He had hauled her against the fish tank in her quarters on the Normandy pretty easily, all things considered.

The memory of that night hit him with a violence, as he realized exactly how long it had been since he’d been able to call up memories of her, memories that intimate, without feeling acute, horrific sorrow. Intimacy had died with her.

But Garrus brought himself back into the present by stating, because he knew that if he asked, Arison would refuse,

“I want to help.”

He didn’t mean just now, and he was pretty sure she knew that.

Arison gave a small nod against him, which he felt more than saw. He could feel her warm breath on his skin and plates through his clothes, and, Spirits, if he hadn’t tried countless times to recall what that had felt like on the nights where he stared, sleepless, at the ceiling.

Garrus slid one arm beneath her knees where they hung off of the chair and put one around her back, and when he held all of her weight, as he rose to his feet, he found himself horrified at how easy it was to lift her.

It felt wrong, holding the strongest woman he knew like a child. But it also felt so right in the most bitter-sweet way.

When he lay her on the bed and began to help arrange the blankets, Arison murmured,

“I still have them. If they’re too bad… bring Tech Palmer?”

She didn’t need to say more. He knew she was talking about her night terrors, because of course she would still have them. They were probably worse now, if anything.

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” he promised.

He grabbed the chair she had been in and brought it over to sit beside the bed. It was old habit that had him bringing a hand to rest on the top of her head, against the hair that felt so soft and strange.

It didn’t take long for her breathing to steady, for her eyes to close, and then, Garrus was left with just his thoughts as he sat. And the first coherent thought he had was that, while this hadn’t been an outcome he’d ever considered, because he’d been prepared to cut her loose and save himself the pain of watching her cannibalize herself, this felt… good… in a way.

She wanted his help, she had apologized and meant it, and he’d be an idiot to throw away his one chance he had to get what he had spent years dreaming he could have. They said nothing good was easy, didn’t they? And there was a difference between letting himself suffer to help her and what she seemed to be offering now: a partnership in her progress.

There were things he needed to do, though, before she woke up, so Garrus reluctantly pulled his hand away from her head and left her room unlocked. No one would bother her, and he’d need to be able to get back in, once he had finished the things on his short to-do list.

He was going to tell Marina, if she wasn’t in session, that they had talked. She was, more or less, counseling Shepard, so he felt like she should know that there had been some sort of breakthrough. He also needed to grab a datapad from his room so he had something to work on. And he also wanted to talk to the tech Arison had mentioned, because they could maybe answer some of his lingering questions where Marina probably wouldn’t.

Garrus found Marina at her desk with her door open, because, apparently, she was either psychic or had been able to read him well enough to know that he’d be coming back to see her one way or another.

“Will I be arranging a shuttle for you off the station?” she asked as the door shut behind him, before Garrus was even sure of what to say to her.

He couldn’t even be mad, though, because there was no judgement in her voice. If anything, she sounded sympathetic.

“No. She’s sleeping now.”

“Was it the blue cap or the green cap?” she asked.

“Blue?” Garrus asked rather than said, trying to gauge what the answer meant to her.

Marina gave a bit of a nod, but it was clear that whatever the answer meant was a positive thing, since she released the tension in her shoulders and leaned back in her chair.

“If you had left, I would have understood,” she offered as she gestured to a chair that sat in front of her desk. Which was just more proof that she had predicted this entire situation. He knew she was intuitive, but this bordered on outright eerie.

He sat but found that he had a hard time meeting Marina’s questioning, intense gaze.

“How have you managed to hide her, after all this time?” he asked. “Because there are any number of governments and tabloids and organizations who would desperately love to hear that Arison’s actually alive.”

Marina did not miss the use of Shepard’s first name.

“When they triaged the injured from the Citadel, she provided a different name, and she had taken off her tags. Once she was conscious, she asked to be brought here.”

There was some bitter laughter which accidentally tumbled from Garrus’ mouth as he considered that from the moment she had realized she was injured beyond what any person should have been able to withstand, she had still been as proud as ever. She surely had been barely able to even use her hands, and yet, somehow, she had managed to get rid of one of the few identifying things on her body, so no one would see Commander Shepard weak. It was so in-character that it managed to toe the line between being hysterical and horrific.

“How long ago did she start walking again?”

“More recently than she would like to admit.”

“She needs all that medication, doesn’t she?”

“At least most of it.”

“You know she was using, then,” Garrus presumed, and the lack of shock on Marina’s face at the news was proof enough that he was right.

“Arison has been through a lot, as I’m sure you know, and she can be quite persuasive when she wants to be. Am I correct in assuming that you two talked like adults?”

There was still more he needed to hear from her, more that he needed to understand, but… this was the closest he’d been to being happy in a long time. He wasn’t happy, not yet, but he could see a world in which he might be, and that was unbelievable. A light at the end of the tunnel, maybe, and in this one, he wasn’t considering how bad it would be to crash a transport vehicle into some desolate area of the Citadel that still had rubble lying around.

“She told me a bit. I’m supposed to get Tech Palmer if her night terrors get too bad.”

Marina sat back in her chair, her eyebrows knitting together.

“Lucia Palmer doesn’t work here anymore. If things get that bad, though, I’ll probably be your best bet, since Arison is historically least likely to try to attack me.”

Arison had been confused, which on its own seemed fair enough. She was tired, in pain, and recovering from things he wasn’t even privy to, but gears were turning now, as Garrus eyed Marina with near-suspicion.

“I have to get some things, but then I’ll head back to her room. I promised her I would be there when she woke up.”

“She’ll be asleep for at least four hours, after the medicine she took. Don’t worry yourself too much,” Marina instructed as Garrus got to his feet quickly.

He had a sinking suspicion that he was piecing together something that he didn’t really want to know about, that he probably shouldn’t know about, but the facts were laid out in front of him, accidentally hinting the truth. And he got the strange feeling that he shouldn’t tell Marina what he was starting to suspect.

“Thanks, Marina,” Garrus offered as he walked out of her office, barely noticing that it hardly connected to what she had said last.

The doctor appeared to be more fascinated by his use of her first name than the apropos statement, though.

Garrus couldn't get to a terminal fast enough. The nearest was in a staff room further down the hall, and when he logged in with the administrative password, the first thing he searched the records for was “Palmer.”

There were a number of results on the patient end, but there was only one archived as having been an employee, a woman named Lucia Palmer, hired in 2160 as a technician.

Without hesitation, Garrus searched the name Nwosu. The doctor was still listed as an active employee, since apparently no one had had the heart to update her status. The records on her employment were exactly what Garrus expected to read. Hired near the opening of Havenwood, Dr. Nwosu had initially started her prestigious career in the pediatrics field.

Marina worked in pediatric psychology, and she said she had been in Havenwood near its opening, placing her there at around the same time as the others.

That first time Garrus had seen Arison in Havenwood, sitting amongst the chaotic piles of papers, she had asked for records from 2163.

Marina had said that the third floor, where Arison had made her base of operations, was initially the only pediatrics section of the station.

Garrus didn’t need to pull up an extranet search to know that the raid that decimated the Shepard family occurred not long before either of those dates.

The realization sunk in slowly as he stared at the tabs in front of him, at the dossiers of Dr. Nwosu and Tech Palmer.

This wasn’t Arison’s first stay at Havenwood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so there are two minor-ish canon changes for Arison’s story. First of all, she’s four years older than canon Shep. Second, the Mindoir raid happened in 2158 instead of 2170. The reasons for these changes are for flavor purposes/ things that will become plot relevant later. Everything else happens on the canon timeline, and CdCr is happening in 2191.


	19. NREM

Marina had said it would take Arison four hours to wake up, and even though she was right almost to the minute, those hours crawled by impossibly slow as Garrus sat next to her, frozen with indecision.

He could try to comb through the records in the administrative account. He knew just enough to maybe find a file that might be connected to Arison. He’d already searched her name before, when he was looking for her records about the last five years, and he’d found absolutely nothing. Either she’d hidden those out of sight, or she’d used a different name.

Who else would she be, if not Arison?

Maybe he could find something. Maybe he would find something.

But then he would be unearthing things that Arison had gone through pains to keep from him, and he had the deep, painful suspicion that if she was hiding them, they wouldn’t be a pleasant read. It didn’t take too many steps of logic to at least guess at why she would have been in Havenwood as a child. Her whole family had been killed, and she had seen her mother and sister die when she was only, what? Six? Eight?

One of the drawings on the wall behind Marina’s desk might have been done by a little Arison. No wonder Marina was so worried; years ago, she was trying to help this kid get better, and then that little girl came back worse than ever.

He could go to Marina, tell her what he had learned and ask if she would give him the records, so he could understand… well… any part of what was going on. But he once he had gathered the datapad and made his way back to the atrium from his room, he found that he couldn’t go behind Arison’s back. He would have to ask her himself to see how much she was willing to discuss. He would have to wait.

He’d already waited for her for two years and then five more.

Four hours was nothing compared to that, he kept telling himself.

But every second crawled by, each one asking Garrus if he didn’t want to just rummage through the files scattered around the room, or go to Marina, or deep-dive in the facility’s records.

By the time Arison showed signs of waking, he was thankful for a distraction, but couldn’t be thankful for more than a moment, because while she was twitching in her sleep, her breathing was also becoming rushed. He’d seen this before, on the Normandy, in those last weeks they had had together, but time had dulled the exact image of her panic in his mind. She never showed fear, and seeing it now, even when he knew everything was safe, struck panic into him. If she had ever looked like this on the battlefield, he would have known it was the end of everything.

His response needed to be calm, but some instinctual part of him was on the defensive, seeing her this scared. He knew it was a bad idea to try to restrain her, and not just because of how fragile she looked. Even touching her to wake her was probably only going to make it worse at this point.

“Arison,” he murmured as her heartrate continued to skyrocket.

She didn’t seem to hear him, though, and that left him with few options other than letting her live through the rest of whatever horrific thing her mind was putting her through or touching her.

Garrus settled for putting a hand on her shoulder, against the heavy fabric that had been guarding exactly how thin she had gotten, and with as little force as possible, shook her slightly.

When her nearly-grey eyes opened, he saw fear. Abject fear. And it had him ripping his hand back away from her as quickly as he could manage. She was scared of him, if only for a second, and that had him feeling sick to his stomach.

“You were having a night terror,” he explained slowly, softly, as her eyes darted around the room with vicious energy.

Looking around the room seemed to calm Arison down a bit, though, and all things considered, that made a lot of sense. She had been here before, in this exact same room, when she was a child. It was probably something like home to her. Maybe it was the closest thing to a home she’d ever had other than the Normandy.

It only took a few moments for Arison to sit herself up on the bed, and even though Garrus was waiting anxiously for her shaking arms to give out, they didn’t, so he pulled back to avoid hovering.

“Garrus?” she asked, confused. She was probably still trying to separate night terror from reality.

“I told you I’d be here when you woke up,” he reminded.

At this, she raised her head, meeting his gaze from behind strands of her black hair.

For the first time in Havenwood, Arison smiled. It was small, almost not noticeable, but it was there, that familiar upturn of her lips, and Garrus decided there was nothing he wouldn’t do to see that again. He’d missed her in so many different ways. Her wit. Her humor. Her smiles.

Her hands were settled on her knees and standing a foot back from the bed was getting increasingly awkward.

Casual, that was always a good bet, as best as he could ever pull it off, so Garrus sat back into his chair and once again brought his hand on top of her own.

It was evident with that she had missed him, too, in the way that she once more tightened her hands into his. She was never the most affectionate person, but, Spirits, Garrus craved even this simple intimacy from her.

“I don’t deserve this.”

And he should have seen it coming from her and prepared something helpful to say, but instead he barely managed to not sound bitter when he asked,

“How many years of being alone until you would have?”

He’d meant it as a joke, but Arison’s face fell into an expression he had come to associate with her trying to hide guilt. It wasn’t quite sad, but it came with a drop in her lips that almost looked like anger and an apologetic look in her eyes.

Arison seemed at a loss for words, and Garrus couldn’t keep what he knew to himself anymore.

“Before you fell asleep, you mentioned Tech Palmer. Do you remember?”

And now Arison’s face fell even further.

“I…”

She started what was going to be a lie, they both knew it, so Garrus gently ran over whatever she was going to try.

“Dr. Nwosu and Marina have been here for decades. Tech Palmer left Havenwood years ago. You chose this room, because it was familiar to you.”

“And I thought C-Sec kicked you out,” she accused only half-heartedly.

“Why—"

He cut himself off, because it was a stupid question. Why hadn’t she told him? Because it was something even she hadn’t wanted to live with. Because she always had to seem strong and capable, and she feared looking weak at a pretty much pathological level. Admitting it would mean opening up old wounds while she was already bleeding out from fresh ones.

“You don’t need to tell me things you don’t want to, but I want us to be a team again,” he started.

Because, hell, that was exactly what he wanted. Whatever they had before, maybe they could have it again if they both tried hard enough.

“I hoped you had moved on,” she admitted, and the way she was staring at him was frankly unnerving. It was like she was trying to get him to move on right now, to suddenly have lived an entirely different life with just once gaze.

There were a lot of responses that Garrus had to sort through. He wanted to point out that no one ever really moved on from Shepard; even the members of her crew who had done well by themselves, like Ash and Tali and Jacob, they still mourned her. He also wanted to point out that she had said ‘hoped,’ because apparently, she had known, somewhere deep within herself, that he couldn’t.

“When I said I would meet you at the bar, I meant it. It was just going to be a few years before I thought we would meet up again,” was the most honest thing he could muster.

There had been a few darker nights when he had imagined how nice it would be to finally just… not wake up, because then he might be able to see Shepard again. She’d be waiting for him, wearing that black dress that she had looked absolutely stunning and nearly unrecognizable in, and she would have shots waiting for him with one of her rare wicked smirks on her face. And she would have some teasing comment about how he had taken his damn sweet time.

At the time, that had been all he could lay claim to hoping for.

And he didn’t want to say this, he wanted to just be able to move on in good faith, but…

“I was hoping, that night that you showed up, that you’d say you had missed me the way I missed you.”

Her response was quiet.

“I did miss you, Garrus.”

Then, without missing a beat, she began to try to make her way off of the bed. It was a painstaking process, and with each passing moment, it became more and more difficult not to hover nervously. Finally, though, she got to her feet and walked haltingly over to a stack of files in the far corner of the room.

This pile was different from the others, but Garrus only noticed now what drew his attention to them. They were actually neat, and there was a bit of clear floor around them. These ones were not just tossed into their position but actually set in place.

Her gait was better than it had been yesterday, he noticed as she walked back to him, but Garrus had the growing suspicion that she was still avoiding her cane. And if he knew her as well as he was sure he did, she probably wasn’t even conscious of that.

“When you want to, you can read this,” she offered once she stood in front of him, her hand outstretched with just one file in it.

The label read “Jane Doe 19” and dated 2162 on the upper edge.

He didn’t need to ask. This was her way of telling him what had happened without hurting herself.

Garrus pulled the file toward himself like there was a bomb inside. Her fingers pried off the paper one by one, measured, as if she was relinquishing some part of herself in this transaction.

“I need to shower,” she murmured, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the file.

Garrus got to his feet from the chair and set the file down on her bed to try to separate her from it a bit more.

She was struggling to stand now, and even though she would probably hand him his ass for it, he couldn’t help but worry. This was a medical facility, so there was probably something inside the bathroom to alert a tech or nurse if she fell. But, Spirits, she was so stubborn. She would break all her bones in her body before asking for help.

She probably had broken all of her bones before asking for his help.

“Hey, I could join you,” he offered in a lowered tone, resting a hand on her waist. She would reject him out of hand if she knew exactly what he was worrying about.

“No,” she said quickly, pulling away from his touch, and that hurt to see. After only a second, the vehement look in her eye softened as she apparently reconsidered her reaction. “No,” she reiterated with conviction, but this time she almost sounded apologetic.

And then she raised her hand and rested it on the side of his mandibles, which had him shutting his eyes out of reflex and leaning his head into her, because he had missed his. Even if she didn’t want what they had before, he had missed her touch so much it bordered on being pathetic. When he had first met her, he hadn’t understood why women made men do the things they did. He had long since stopped being confused.

“I need to think. And… you have some reading…”

“I don’t need to—”

“You do.”

This was the tone she gave orders in, and he responded on reflex, with a sharp nod, as if she had singled out an enemy for him to focus fire on. 

“Alright, then, I’ll see you soon?” he asked as she pulled her hand back.

“If you still want to, yeah,” she said lamely and turning away before he could even begin to ask what in the hell that meant.

But he didn’t need to ask. The answers all sat in the folder on her bed, and as he left with it tucked against his chest, Garrus couldn’t help but feel like he already knew at least part of what he was going to find. He had had his suspicions before, and now that he had the orders to confirm them, he felt like he understood what the human phrase “ignorance is bliss” meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are about to get very dark in the upcoming chapter. Please heed the added tags when it goes up and take care of yourself. I am going to post the next three chapters back to back, so the rough topics don’t get dragged out for a week and a half. The rating is also bumping up to Explicit next chapter for several reasons.


	20. The Havenwood Log: Part One

_“A vigilante’s salary isn’t so bad,” Arison commented from over her glass of wine. _

_They were both two glasses in now, and he was still trying to gain a sense of footing in this entire conversation. _

_“You should try it,” Garrus teased, barely managing not to make a comment about how, if she did, she probably wouldn’t get everyone in her squad killed. Because that would doom the whole night. This was all supposed to be foreplay, not a heart-to-heart. _

_It looked like Arison saw his dismay at his own statement, and, proof that the Spirits gave at least a single shit about him, she ignored the comment entirely and instead downed the entire rest of her glass in one go. _

_He had heard her alcohol tolerance was legendary, especially since Cerberus put whatever they had into her body, and now he was almost regretting not getting something stronger. But at least she needed some liquid courage, too. Watching vids was one thing. Sleeping with Commander Shepard? That was something entirely different. _

_"Hmm, is this Archangel asking for assistance?” she asked, her tone dropping low, and all the blood in his body dropping lower, too. _

_He would be lying if he didn’t say that the title coming from her strange human lips wasn’t one of the hottest things he’d ever heard. Which had him shifting back into the couch slightly._

_"Of course not. Being a wanted vigilante meant that I had human women throwing themselves at me all the time,” he shot back, trying to regain some of the confidence he had been able to fake before. _

_But he had no actions to follow this up with, and his claim had Shepard moving from her spot on the couch to stand in front of him, and even if he had no idea what exactly he was supposed to do with her body, he definitely knew that he wanted to do something with it, alien or not. _

_Then, with the same exactitude that she did everything, she brought her knees to either side of him and settled onto his lap._

_"Like this?” she asked, but there was wicked upturn in her lips, because she knew he was bluffing. _

_"Uh huh,” was all he could manage as he settled his ungloved hands on the waist of her informal uniform, something she would have had an immediate response to if she was turian. _

_"Watch your teeth,” she only half-joked before closing the space between them, her hands sliding up his neck and her lips sliding over his mouth plates like she had earlier. It was foreign, something turians simply weren’t really capable of, but it didn’t take more than a split second for him to decide that he definitely liked it. It was going to take getting used to, but he definitely liked it._

There were four years between what happened on Mindoir and 2162.

Four years between Shepard losing her entire family and being entered into Havenwood with no name.

There was that one human, all those years ago. What was her name? Tabitha? She had been taken on Mindoir and escaped the slavers. She had been frantic, desperate, and threatening violence, and where anyone else would have walked away or had them put a sleeping dart in the raving woman, Arison had talked her down, had gotten her help. Arison had been so collected and calm, and, at the time, he hadn’t questioned how it seemed like she had known exactly what to say.

Four years.

Garrus sat in the chair in his room, the unopened file in his hands, as he struggled to convince himself to finally read it. He had been thumbing at the corners for minutes now. It felt like just as much of an invasion of her privacy now as it had when he was considering just looking this up himself, even if he had her express permission, even though he knew that she at least partly wanted him to read it.

Because she wanted him to understand her past. To understand her.

She was reaching out, and that was what he had wanted from her, wasn’t it?

She wanted it, and he needed to understand, so it was best to just get it over with.

Flipping over the yellow cover of the file like he was ripping off a bandage, Garrus came face to face with the print-outs of old records. The first page was simple, an initial intake performed by none other than Dr. Nwosu. It was clinical, simple. It left him sitting, stock-still, blood frozen in his veins.


	21. The Havenwood Log: Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the change in rating.

Case Manager: <strike>unassigned</strike> Amelie Caron

Overseeing Doctor: Dr. Nwosu

Patient ID: 003752

Patient Name: <strike>Jane Doe 19</strike> Arison M Shepard

Date: 10/06/2162

Initial Intake

Performed by Dr. Nwosu

Patient is a human female, approximately 11 years of age. Patient is of mixed Asian and Caucasian descent with black hair and blue eyes, standing at about 1.5 meters tall. Patient was delivered to Havenwood by a joint Justicar-Alliance taskforce at 1:16 AM after being found in the possession of batarian slavers.

Visual-only examination done. We will have to sedate the patient before completing a full intake, as doing so while conscious would only traumatize her further.

Patient presented with several facial lacerations as well as binding marks on her wrists. Patient either could not or would not speak, so identification has fallen to the taskforce. Patient exhibited the symptoms of entering withdrawal. We will provide her with Combination Q drugs until withdrawal can be safely managed.

Ordered:

  * Full physical exam within **12 hours**
    * Sedative dosage (Alofal tablets) with first meal for full exam
  * Combination Q drugs via injection or IV drip within **12 hours** to prevent unmanaged withdrawal
  * Full psychiatric intake within **24 hours**
    * Recommended: Drs Sobczak or Santos
    * Recommended: no male or non-human attendants
  * Experienced case manager, either Caron or Adell

Digital signature:

Dr. Uzoma Nwosu 

* * *

Case Manager: Amelie Caron

Overseeing Doctor: Dr. Nwosu

Patient ID: 003752

Patient Name: <strike>Jane Doe 19</strike> Arison M Shepard

Date: 10/06/2162

Initial Physical Examination

Performed by Dr. Nwosu

Patient is a human female, approximately 12 years of age. Patient was delivered to Havenwood by a joint Justicar-Alliance taskforce at 1:16 AM after being found in the possession of batarian slavers. Only a visual examination could be completed upon initial intake:

_“Patient presented with several facial lacerations as well as binding marks on her wrists. . . Patient exhibited the symptoms of entering withdrawal. We will provide her with Combination Q drugs until withdrawal can be safely managed.”_

Patient was given sedatives orally at 3:00 AM by Tech Palmer; patient accepted Alofal tablet willingly. Patient was moved into exam room once unconscious and was given an IV at this time, through which the Combination Q drugs were provided. Blood was drawn for further testing before administering the Combination Q drugs. Exam was assisted by CM Caron. 

Findings are as follows:

  * Head/neck: minor lacerations beneath hair, none requiring stitches; broken nose, now healed; all secondary teeth grown in, aging patient at around 12 years of age
  * Torso: emaciated (2/6); healed wounds ranging from 2 cm in diameter to 15 cm in diameter, some appear to be talon marks
  * Arms/ hands: broken, improperly healing left ulna, was reset during exam; nailbeds indicate severe malnutrition; bruises and open friction wounds around wrists; track marks on inner arms, indicating forced intravenous drug use
  * Legs/ feet: healed wounds ranging from 2 cm in diameter to 15 cm in diameter, some appear to be talon marks; bruises and open friction wounds around ankles
  * Other: indications of sexual assault, no DNA recoverable

Ordered:

  * Continued use of sedation: low-dosage, therapeutic Serazepam (10 mg)
  * Continuation of Combination Q drugs until blood test results
  * Full psychiatric exam within **12 hours**
    * Recommended: Drs Sobczak or Santos
    * **Required: no male or non-human attendants**
  * Follow-up appointments every three days until further notice with Dr. Nwosu

Digital signature:

Dr. Uzoma Nwosu

* * *

Case Manager: Amelie Caron

Overseeing Doctor: Dr. Nwosu

Patient ID: 003752

Patient Name: <strike>Jane Doe 19</strike> Arison M Shepard

Date: 10/06/2162

Initial Psychiatric Exam

Performed by Dr. Santos

At the recommendation of Dr. Nwosu, I attempted an initial exam of Jane Doe 19 at 2:30 pm. Jane, despite the sedatives given to her by Dr. Nwosu, was visibly frightened of leaving her assigned room in the Eastern Wing, 3rd floor. I opted to perform the exam in her assigned room without assistance, as I suspected that the patient would only be more nervous if exposed to orderlies or more techs. She has already formed a strong bond with Tech Lucia Palmer, I was told this morning, so I have asked that Lucia be assigned to Jane Doe for the majority of her hours for the foreseeable future. It is of the utmost importance that Jane have stability in order for her to begin her recovery.

When I first met Jane, she was sitting on her bed, staring at the wall. She remained non-verbal after I offered my name and title. I had been told by Lucia, Dr. Nwosu, and Amelie that Jane had yet to say anything. I asked Jane the normal intake questions and was given no response, as expected. I was given no acknowledgement of my presence until I asked Jane her name. Jane then shook her head.

This was the most communication between us during the entire session. It was clear that Jane’s sedation, while necessary, has had the unfortunate effect of making her nearly catatonic. When I gave Jane a pencil and some paper from my bag and asked her to draw what she was feeling, she did take the pencil, but she drew nothing. I left the paper in the hopes that perhaps she will become more interested as her sedative dosage nears its half-life. I did not, however, leave the pencil, as I have instructed that we initiate SR Protocol in order to protect Jane from any potentially violent or self-destructive impulses she may have.

Ordered:

  * Strict adherence to SR Protocol.
  * Lower dose of sedatives, perhaps halve current dosage. Jane will not make progress if she cannot respond to her situation. If Dr. Nwosu feels the current dose is justified, it should be cut back as soon as possible.
  * Follow-up appointments every five days with myself; meetings every day with properly trained nurse practitioners for therapy. Art therapy will most likely have the most effect considering Jane’s age, experiences, and current non-verbal state.
  * Notify myself when/ if Jane speaks.
  * **It would perhaps help us to treat the patient if we knew her name and history, beyond what immediately brought her to us. Another message should be sent to the taskforce to remind them that we are awaiting information. **

Digital signature:

Dr. Marina Santos

* * *

Case Manager: Amelie Caron

Overseeing Doctor: Dr. Nwosu

Patient ID: 003752

Patient Name: <strike>Jane Doe 19</strike> Arison M Shepard

Date: 10/06/2162

Initial Case Manager Report

Performed by Amelie Caron

Jane Doe 19 has been brought to us by a joint Justicar-Alliance anti-slavery taskforce. She was found during a raid by Justicar Corinne Bastia. Corinne says that she found Jane Doe 19 on an unnamed ship of batarian origin in asari space. Jane Doe 19 was the only child onboard, as well as the only person who had not been recently abducted. It is unclear why Jane Doe 19 was on this ship.

Corinne could offer few details of the investigation, as it is all classified in so far as the content and reason for the searching of the specific ship Jane Doe 19 was found on. Corinne stated that the child was found in one of the bedrooms on the ship, hiding in a corner. She stated that the child responded only to orders and did not seem to understand that she was no longer a slave.

This behavior is evident still. Jane Doe 19 has complied with direct orders without complaint, including taking medication. Dr. Nwosu concluded that Jane Doe 19 was not only kept drugged during her captivity but was also repeatedly sexually assaulted. Dr. Nwosu’s exam also indicated that Jane Doe 19 was recently assaulted by a turian, thus we have determined that only female, human staff should interact with Jane Doe 19 for the time being. Dr. Santos has been unable to complete a satisfactory psychiatric exam of the patient, which Dr. Santos contributes in part to the sedatives which the patient has been placed on.

The identification of Jane Doe 19 is our primary goal, beyond treating the immediate symptoms with which she presented. While this responsibility does fall to the taskforce, I have decided, with the approval of both Drs. Santos and Nwosu, to collect a DNA sample from the patient and send it out ourselves to several databases in the hopes that this will speed up the identification. There is a distinct possibility that Jane Doe 19 was never reported as missing due to any number of circumstances surrounding her initial capture, therefore it is distinctly possible that the taskforce may find no conclusive results through more traditional means.

We should hear back from the Citadel databases within three business days. We should hear back from Alliance military databases within five business days. Several private companies have also been sent the DNA results, in the hopes that perhaps some family member may be located.

Jane Doe 19’s blood tests should be back within 24 hours, so we can identify what she has been drugged with in order to safely wean her off.

Until anything more is discovered about the patient, she will remain in isolation. Until the blood test results, she will continue to receive Combination Q drugs as prescribed by Dr. Nwosu.


	22. The Havenwood Log: Part Three

_“Bite me,” Arison ground out, her head thrown back against the empty fish tank._

_Her skin was so fragile and thin under his hands, no plates and soft and… Spirits, she was so tight around him, and the way her hands were grasping under his fringe, he was so close._

_"Yeah?” he asked. It was torture to stop thrusting into her, she was so wet and warm, but that was nearly an order from her, so he managed to pause to ask. _

_“Don’t stop! Christ, I’m close, just bite me!” she ordered._

_One of her hands pulled off of his neck to begin desperately circling her clit. _

_"Yes, ma’am,” Garrus chuckled out before bringing his teeth to the juncture of where her shoulders met her neck, bracing her against the tank fully so he could get a better angle to continue pounding into her. _

_Her breathing was short, quick, and he could tell she really was close. _

_ Just inches away, and when he brought his sharp teeth to her neck, he bit down without a second thought. The moment he pierced her flesh, the moment he tasted her strange, red blood, she let out the most ragged of groans, the headiest of noises that he wanted to hear again and again for years to come. She tightened around him, and her legs became vises around his hips, and he came, her name and her flesh and blood in his mouth._

He could still taste her blood in his mouth as he closed the file numbly. There were a hundred more pages in the file for Jane Doe 19, presumably some where they discovered who she was. There were probably the blood test results for what she had been drugged with, whatever would start her decades long struggle with substance abuse. With the hundred pages, there was probably some track record of how she regained herself, how she learned to function again. How this Jane Doe 19 who had been a… a what? A child sex slave? (He had helped find information to bust slavery rings a couple times on the Citadel, and he knew in theory what some people did with slaves, but he had never… seen it, and imagining Jane Doe—no, Arison—as a twelve year old child, starved and chained to a bed made him feel so cold and hollow and helpless) How she became the woman he had known for years.

How many times had he brought her to orgasm by biting her or digging his talons into her skin until she bled?

They had found her with claw marks up and down her body, of course she needed it now. She’d associated the pain with sex, and he’d….

There was this impulse in his mind, which almost felt like it was being screamed from the deepest parts of his thoughts, that had him wanting to rip his teeth out.

And how could she love a turian after that?

Why had she chosen him? Because he could recreate what she already knew about… sex or love or whatever? 

Was he that bad of a turian, then, really? He had done what others of his species had before, hadn’t he? Drawn blood and chased his own pleasure and…

He felt sick.

She had worked beside countless turians and never said anything, never told him. She had saved batarian lives, even after everything… She had placed it all in the past, but she had shown him, in her own way. Not just with the file, but every time she came with her blood running down his mandibles, hadn’t she?

Why hadn’t he guessed?

His stomach fell further. He hadn’t thought he could feel any sicker, but here he was.

_She was on her knees in front of him as he sat on the edge of the couch. There were a couple strands of hair hanging down from her bun, where he had locked his talons against her head as she had kissed him. At first, he had thought she would pull away, because he still had no idea what he was doing, but then she had slid off of his lap to kneel on the floor. _

_"Was there a vid about this?” she asked with a wicked expression that made his breath catch._

_Before he could answer that, yeah, he had definitely watched one or two vids and been… increasingly interested in the way human lips worked, she ordered,_

_“Strip for me,” and in the ensuing seconds, as she moved to give him space to move, he shucked off his civvies as fast as he could manage without looking too desperate. _

_“Like what you see?” he asked._

_It was good she wasn’t a turian, or she’d hear exactly how much he feared her response in his subvocals. He was humanoid, at least by some ontological classifications, but he knew that he wasn’t exactly human-looking at all. Bipedal, yeah, with a generally similar bone structure, sure, but that was where the similarities started ending._

_Arison though, Spirits, she looked at him intently, as if thinking deeply, and she didn’t seem shocked at all. _

_“I think I have the basics,” she admitted as she returned to kneeling directly in front of him, and he had never felt this exposed in his entire life, and he was about to ask that maybe she at least take off some clothes, but she leaned in and brought her tongue up the slit in his plates. _

_She wasn’t dressed to kill or wearing much makeup or moaning like her life depended on it, but this was more pornographic than any of the vids. And this was definitely hotter, too, because as she began to wet her lips and kiss around his plates, he had to grasp the material of the couch in order to stay still._

_Her pink tongue dragged its way, torturously slow, from the bottom of the seam to the top a few more times, and the moment he began to unsheathe, in far less time than it normally took, Arison sealed her lips around him, and it was like nothing he’d ever felt before. _

_It was one thing to feel how hot and wet her mouth was, to feel her gently sucking him further into her mouth, but it was something completely different to see her do it. Shepard, the woman who couldn’t die, the woman who could talk her way into or out of anything, who was the strongest person he’d ever met, had him in her mouth, bobbing her head up and down slowly, like she was trying to tease him._

_Then, just as he was getting used to her pace, she slid him into her mouth entirely, taking him as deep as she could, and there was absolutely no part of him that had any sense of control anymore. His hips jerked forward, and his talons stopped punching into the couch and flew to her head. _

_The moment she gagged a bit, Garrus ripped his hands from her hair and forced them back to couch with his mouth already spilling out apologies._

_"I’m sorry, I—”_

_He got no further, because Arison cocked a single eyebrow, somehow still composed despite how slick and bruised her lips looked. _

_"Did I tell you to stop?” _

_"You sort of couldn’t…” he half-laughed, nodding his head down toward his cock, wet with her now-cooling spit._

_Then, with a quick movement, she pulled her hair out of the bun it always sat in, and she looked like an entirely different person now. Almost unrecognizable except for the intent in her eyes. _

_"I’ll let you know if I don’t like it. I won’t break.”_

_And she pulled him back into her mouth, down her throat, as if she had something to prove, and Spirits, whatever it was, she was proving it. _

_This was a challenge, though. She was finding all of his weak spots, and he was going to have to have his own exploration as soon as he could, but as she grabbed his hands and put them back on her head, he decided that was going to have to wait. _

_Everything began to blur together as she increased her pace, alternating between sucking and licking and pumping, and it really took no time at all for him to feel the pleasure rising, to feel the pressure behind his plates. Arison seemed to guess this, because she sped up her pace, and it took every inch of control that Garrus had to pull her off of him._

_“Is something wrong?” she asked from the end of his dick, her lips still touching him, still pushing him closer to the edge._

_"No! No, I just… This’ll be an embarrassing night if you keep that up.” _

_She looked smug, of all things, and of course only she could look smug like that, on her knees, fully dressed in that black and grey uniform, just having sucked his dick like her life depended on it. _

_“It’s your turn to strip, soldier,” Garrus ordered as best as he could, trying to look as casual as he could ever manage, like he hadn’t just been seconds from coming in her mouth before she had even so much as taken off her shirt. _

_She eyed him for a moment, and he expected her to pull rank or make some snide comment, but instead, she brought her hands to the hem of her shirt and, once she had folded it and put it on the couch’s arm, asked,_

_“Like what you see?” she returned._

_She wasn’t secretly self-conscious as she asked it, not like he’d been. And it looked good on her, that confidence, like it always did. Her skin was scarred to hell and back, and she didn’t give a shit about it. _

_“Yeah. Yeah I do,” he thought aloud as he considered that, no, she wasn’t a turian woman, but he it wouldn’t take long for him to get used to it, to her, and, given a little time, he would definitely find her human body as attractive as her personality._

She had known what she was doing. She hadn’t been nervous, not like he had. All he had had was instincts, a handful of educated guesses, and some basic ideas from the vids. She hadn’t hesitated; she had already known what to do with a turian body. And he had just assumed it was because she always seemed so confident. And he’d assumed she liked the pain because she was Shepard, and she could take anything? It was a thing normal, non-traumatized people liked, right? Some pain?

He hadn’t done anything she hadn’t wanted, but her reasons for wanting it?

Turians were normally around seven feet tall. He knew Arison was tall for a human woman, but how tall were human children? She was eight when she was first taken from Mindoir. Had she ever even seen a turian before? How small was she when she met the turian that left those claw marks on her in the report Dr. Nwosu made?

No wonder she was so scared of seeming weak.

No wonder she had wanted him to tell her that she was weak, because she had probably heard it from another turian, years ago, and whatever she had buried before joining the Alliance still haunted her.

Rightfully.

And no wonder she was so upset a child died here, in what was probably the one place she had ever felt safe.

And what was he supposed to do now?

Pretend he had never read this? That definitely wasn’t what Arison wanted right? What was he even supposed to be feeling, after learning… this… about the woman he loved?

He felt anger. After everything, she had had to play nice with turians and batarians and Spirits-only-know what other races had hurt her for years. And after everything, she’d done it so gracefully and brilliantly. The universe had given her shit, and she’d made herself into Commander Shepard, someone literally everyone in the universe knew had saved their lives.

She’d been his first human, and he was a quick learner, but how had he never figured out that maybe she knew more about what turned him on, about literally any part of sex with a turian, than he had expected?

He should have guessed, right?

But as he looked down at the yellow paper on his lap, which he didn’t have the heart to read any more of, he knew he was wrong. He couldn’t have guessed. He couldn’t have guessed any part of this, because Arison had worked so hard to hide it. He couldn’t have guessed, not really, not about details like this, and Arison knew that. That was why she had given him the file.

Garrus tucked his head back so his fringe didn’t hit the chair as he rested his head against the back of it, staring at the ceiling of his room, both hands resting on top of the papers, just… thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, that’s the end of these backstory chapters. Thanks for hanging in there. As a side note, the stuff Mordin says about levo/dextro processing is straight up scientifically wrong, so I’ve just entirely ignored it and will continue to do so without regret.


	23. The Space Between

“Was Caitus one of them?” he asked the moment he stepped into Marina’s shared common room.

She was sitting on a worn couch with a datapad in her left hand and a mug in her right. Her hair was braided to the side, and she was wearing casual clothes, which looked strange on her, since he’d only seen her in the Havenwood coat over a more formal outfit until now.

Her eyes took only a second to lock onto the file he had in his hand, and then they widened. Slowly, she leaned forward and set her mug onto the coffee table she had been resting her feet on before he’d burst in without even knocking. The gears were turning in her head, clearly, because Garrus hadn’t exactly given any context to what he was saying, and she couldn’t know what papers he’d been reading.

He tossed the file across the table, so she could read the name on the edge. He wasn’t trying to be rude, though he realized only after it hit the fake wood that it probably wasn’t the nicest way to go about showing her. He just wanted answers as much as he didn’t want answers.

Once she scanned the name, Marina let out a long breath and brought her gaze back to Garrus’ own.

“As you may know, there was no recoverable DNA…”

“But he was one of them, wasn’t he?” he asked again.

“He certainly matches the description Arison gave many years ago, but…”

“But there’s no proof,” Garrus finished for her, because he knew how this went. He’d seen it before, on the Citadel. He’d heard about it often enough, but before this, it had seemed like a distant problem that someone ought to fix, a problem no one ever actually ended up fixing, because everyone else was thinking the same thing.

This was a case that was over thirty years old, and the only proof left was a handwritten record of a child’s description. And even if the victim was Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy… Well, Garrus had heard this song and dance before. Everyone pretended it came down to something like “he said/she said,” and played it off like they were sad that nothing could be done. Like nothing bad had happened if the perpetrator could convincingly insist that he hadn’t done what he had.

He’d heard it all before, and at the time it had bothered him, the injustice of it. Now, though, he was absolutely furious, because he could see exactly how unfair it was in disgusting detail.

But he couldn’t get wrapped up in that. The anger wasn’t doing anything for anyone, and he had more questions, because even with all this new knowledge, things still weren’t completely adding up. Like why exactly Caitus had targeted Havenwoood when he did. When Shepard just happened to be there.

“Then did he attack Havenwood for her? Does he know she’s alive?”

“Arison blames herself, believing that he does, but I don’t understand his motivations if that is the case. She herself only recognized him when she had looked into his credit trail after the attack…”

Then Marina paused and nodded her head toward a closed door nearby.

“Could we speak about this somewhere more private?” Marina asked.

And that had Garrus’ momentum failing, because Shepard hadn’t even really wanted him to know about what had happened, so random strangers, even if they were under oaths or something, probably weren’t supposed to overhear this either. He wanted answers, needed answers, sure, but it was definitely a disservice to Shepard to go shouting about his anger from the rooftops.

“Yeah… Of course.”

Marina got to her feet, picked up the file, and led him to a bedroom which was not that much larger than his own. Being a doctor only afforded her a bit of extra sitting room, and that was only separated from the actual bedroom by a set of half-walls.

Once the door had closed, Garrus explained, “When I first asked Arison why she thought Havenwood was targeted, she had said it was because she was here. I thought… I thought she was just doing what she always did, blaming herself for everything—”

“Which she does do frequently enough,” Marina interrupted, not unhelpfully.

He could see from the way she was looking at him, almost with pity in her eyes, that she was trying to reassure him that he hadn’t done something wrong. But this wasn’t about him. He’d fucked up his fair share of good things in the past, and if he regretted a few small things like misinterpreting some comments since he’d come onto the station, then that was just par for the course.

“So let me get this straight: Caitus tried to get the files, succeeded, and when Arison learned more about who had done it, it just so happened that he was one of the…”

Abusers? Rapists? Slave-owners?

“…one of them,” Garrus recovered. “And he has no idea that she’s here, he was after something different? And this is just some big coincidence all around?”

Instead of her normal, generally kind expression, Marina made it clear that she was just as clueless as him. She gave a shrug of her shoulders and a shake of her head.

“I don’t know, Garrus. And neither does Arison. It might be. It might simply be that the universe has coincidences sometimes. It might be that we’ve missed something. I don’t know.”

The universe had coincidences, maybe. Like Shepard finding him right as he had called his dad with what he expected to be a final, probably disappointing, conversation. Like Shepard managing to survive the explosion of the Catalyst or her breaking into his apartment the very night he was thinking about her ashes floating around in the Citadel’s recycled air.

This didn’t feel like random happenstance.

They were missing something.

“Garrus,” Marina said as she put a hand on his arm, pulling him out of his increasingly frantic thoughts. She was looking him intently in the eyes, like she could see into his soul. He felt like he some grinding piece of machinery, and Marina was an expert mechanic, analyzing his every move with the intent to understand the exact nature of what was misfiring. It was disconcerting, and so was what she said next.

“Arison loves you.”

Answering a question he had already asked, in a way.

“I wouldn’t have counselled her to have her first serious relationship in a decade with a turian, but she chose you for who you are. Not what you remind her of.”

What he reminded her of. Like sharp, predator’s teeth breaking her skin or talons ripping into her. She wasn’t just using him as a tool to keep retraumatizing herself? Every time he slept with her, was she imagining it as someone else? In a situation that he hoped on all hope wasn’t anything like what they shared.

He had drawn her blood all the same, even if she had asked for it.

He was just the same as the others. And he had thought he was a bad turian his whole life, but here he was, the same as some upstanding soldier and citizen like Caitus.

“This is part of why she didn’t want you to know,” Marina admitted, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Is telepathy part of your degree, then?”

“It’s a free service I provide,” Marina offered sarcastically.

“Whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, a patient can grant me the right to discuss their case with another professional. Medical, psychiatric, legal. This is classified as a legal consultation, legally speaking.”

Garrus wanted to laugh. He wanted to admire the fact that she walked this line that she did between being Arison’s one connection to sanity and being a professional. He wanted to sympathize with this impossible situation she’d been put in, where she had once been a little girl’s therapist and was now this grown woman’s only connection to reality. But everything was too much, and he could hardly even sort out what he was supposed to feel, much less what he was actually feeling.

“Are you sure you’re not a lawyer?” he tried to banter, but it was half-hearted at best.

“If I was, every single person who touched Arison would be in jail,” she said, all sarcasm or teasing gone in an instant, but it wasn’t a rebuke, that much was clear. She wasn’t angry at him, but she was just as angry as him. She’d been angry for years.

How many times had she heard the exact details of the horrific things that happened to these children? Surely Arison wasn’t the only one to ever survive what she did. How did Marina not lose it, hearing how children had been hurt day in and day out? He had seen bureaucratic bullshit and slid straight into vigilantism in a few years flat. But Marina? She’d been here for decades.

“What…” Garrus stumbled, as he tried to finish the question he had. What was he supposed to do now? What should he say to her?

“What should I do?”

“I already recommended that you two talk like adults, and that seems to have worked well so far. I wasn’t sure she would let you help her, but, apparently, she’s actually willing to work on her self-isolating tendencies. Things were difficult for her before the raid, but seeing the children, losing Dr. Nwosu, and then dealing with the memories that identifying Caitus brought back… It was a series of triggers that I wasn’t sure she could cope with. Like I said when you first arrived. We are both thankful you came.”

It made sense now. This was why she hadn’t just asked Ash. Or Miranda. Or Liara. Or Samara. Or Tali. Or literally anyone more capable or politically influential than him. Maybe part of it had been because he had access to Hierarchy information, but she couldn’t have risked letting anyone else learn this about her, even if Garrus was positive that none of their friends would have thought any less of her after learning about all this. 

“But what do I _do_?” Garrus reiterated helplessly.

“If you were in her situation, what would you want from a partner?”

Marina chose a safe word, Garrus thought, but she was definitely leaving it open to interpretation. Working-partner or relationship-partner, those two had two very different answers, he was positive. Or maybe they didn’t, but what did that matter when he didn’t even know what exactly he and Shepard were? Exes? They had never broken up. Did those five years qualify as just a period of separation? He had brought up getting married to her back in the day, as a bit of a daydream, but they hadn’t exactly been at a point where they could afford planning that far ahead.

What would he want?

But as he tried to imagine what he would be asking for, he found that he couldn’t. He couldn’t imagine what she had been through, and he definitely couldn’t claim to understand what she had had to do to survive everything that had happened to her in her damned awful life.

But that was a start, at least. He knew that he didn’t know what she wanted or needed.

“I would want someone to ask what I needed,” he offered, and it was a universal answer, for work-partners or something else. He did still care for her, didn’t he? Just as much as he had before she had disappeared, despite everything.

“That seems like a good start,” Marina encouraged. “By staying, you’ve already given her more than she hoped for.”

“Yeah,” Garrus muttered, but he couldn’t stop feeling like he had failed years ago, when he hadn’t pieced together the impossible puzzle of the signs she had let slip over the years. He couldn’t have guessed it, but he still felt like he should have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was harder to write than any other chapter so far. It seems like a weird one to have problems with, but it made me question how I /want/ people to react to my own trauma, and that made it quite the Herculean effort to write.


	24. What, Not Why

He stood stock-still outside the door to Shepard’s room, trying to convince himself to just press the call button. If she wasn’t awake, that was fine. If she didn’t want to talk, well, that was understandable, even if it wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for. She would at least be done with her shower, right?

Fuck.

Fuck. Of course she’d been so quick to turn down a shower with him.

Fuck.

But he couldn’t have known, he immediately reminded himself. He couldn’t have guessed. And besides, he hadn’t offered that because he’d actually wanted sex. He’d just been worried about her, given her pathological refusal to accept help.

Garrus let out a sharp breath as he tried to shove down the guilt that felt like it was strangling him.

He hadn’t known, then, but he did now. He just had to do his best from here on out. That was all anyone could ask of him. So he let out another, slower breath this time and finally just pressed the damn button.

It chimed, and then there was silence. Arison moved slowly, though, when she wasn’t trying to put on some show for him, so ringing twice just seemed rude. And if she was ignoring him, because she was dealing with her own shit, then ringing twice was still not great.

Garrus was half-convinced he should just leave when the door finally did open.

Shepard stood in front of him, looking a lot like she had earlier. She was back to wearing a long-sleeved shirt, buttoned up to her neck, with her wet hair hanging down passed her shoulders. She was using the cane, though, and using it properly this time.

Her eyes darted down to his empty hands.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked unsteadily.

Of all the things he’d expected, this hadn’t been one of them. He’d expected her to be nervous or scared. Maybe she’d be on the defensive. But just… inviting him in? He hadn’t expected that. But she posed it as a question, whether or not he wanted to come in, which was weird. She wouldn’t want to talk about this with the door wide open. Unless this was her asking, one last time, if he really wanted to wade further into her past, which was definitely something she would do. She hated asking for help, she hated seeming weak, and she hated relying on other people, so this had to be difficult for her. She wanted to give him one last out.

Like he was going to take her up on that.

“Yeah, but everything’s fine, okay?” he insisted before she could step aside. He wasn’t going to let her try to calculate his every move until they actually began this conversation. He wasn’t mad at her about any part of this. He didn’t think less of her because of what she had been through. If anything, knowing what she had been through just made him respect her more. And she needed to know that.

“Yeah?” Arison asked slowly as he walked into the room.

There really weren’t many places to sit. There was the one chair, and there was the bed. He wanted this to be a safe conversation somewhere where they could be facing each other, but he definitely wasn’t going to invite himself onto her bed. So that left him walking back to the chair and motioning to the bed with his head, an offer for her to sit.

But she stood where she was once the door closed, her eyes betraying that she didn’t believe what he'd said.

“I can answer your questions,” she offered. “But I don’t remember much anymore, not about that.”

“You should sit,” Garrus tried to encourage again. He was trying to sound gentle, like he was just suggesting something he thought was best, because the last time he’d asked her to sit, the conversation had pretty quickly spiraled into a shouting match, and that didn’t need to happen again.

“Because I should be sitting when you finally say it out loud,” she surmised aloud.

It didn’t make any sense, what she said, even with a bit of context, but Arison slowly sat herself down the bed with a weary look in her eyes.

“Say what out loud?” he finally ventured when Arison offered nothing more, and the seconds crawled by unbearably slow.

“That we’re through. Not that I expected to come back to a relationship after everythi—”

“What? Arison, no,” he cut off.

She expected that, now of all times, he was going to finally, officially just break up with her? Not that they weren’t really broken up for all intents and purposes, what with him sure she was dead. But after he read what he did? Spirits, how had other people reacted before that had her assuming that was where this was going?

“Look, we can circle back to our relationship after this. But I didn’t come up here to… I came up here to ask what you want from me. I can’t imagine what you went through, and I’ve never dealt with anything like this. I knew Mindoir was bad, but I assumed that had been it. And I’m not mad at you for not telling me. I just don’t know what I’m doing. So, please, tell me what you want from me now that I know.”

It all came out in a rush, but he meant every word of it. Through it all, though, Arison was just… frozen.

“You read it, right?” she demanded skeptically.

“Of course, I did! I mean, enough to get the picture, not the whole thing. And I’m here to ask what you want from me.”

“You don’t want to ask how I could be with a turian after all that? You don’t want to ask if I thought of them every time we—”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Like hell this isn’t about you,” she muttered back.

Because it was, in reality, all about him right now, wasn’t it? About what role he had played in their relationship in her mind. About how she had hurt him. About what role he wanted to play in her life now. About how he was feeling now, because she apparently still thought they had a chance at something.

“I didn’t want you to see me weak,” she explained slowly. “I knew that if I told you I was alive, you would drop everything and help me, and I couldn’t let you do that. I’m not sorry for that.”

“Not sorry for the fact I was so depressed I could barely wake up every day?” he asked slowly, hating the taste of the words as they slid from his mouth. Even if he was trying to push it down, because the last thing Arison needed was more anger in her life, her non-apology was bringing back the rage he had felt at seeing her again.

But her determined expression dropped instantly.

“I’m sorry it hurt you. But I’m not sorry I did it. I don’t care if it’s a shit apology. I wasn’t about to have you spoon-feeding me and wiping my ass for three years. If I had told you I was alive and didn’t want to see you, would you have listened?”

His anger died when she posed her question.

Would he have listened? If she had been torn to shreds and burnt and in pain, he would have done anything to help her. Even if she had ordered him not to help, because she wanted to retain some dignity and agency, he wouldn’t have listened. He wouldn’t have let her be alone through that.

And he would have thought he was doing the right thing, because he would think he was helping her. But maybe it wouldn’t have been. Maybe there was a world where ignoring the one thing she expressly didn’t want would have strengthened their relationship. More likely, though? He would have unrepentantly ignored the one boundary she had ever set for him, and she had lived her entire life with people not giving a single shit about her boundaries.

So she had preempted that issue by planning ten steps ahead and executing a strategy that hurt them both. Probably equally, too. She was known for her tactical mind, and she was good at it, at planning and organizing and figuring out the minutiae of a plan. She probably had developed the percentage-likelihood that he would ignore the order or follow it. And the more he was thinking about it, the more he was realizing it was probably a 90/10 situation.

Which meant that he would have ignored the one thing she had ever demanded of him, because he would have felt that she was just trying to suffer alone, like she always did. He would have decided to do it out of love, and it probably would have been the worst decision he could have made. So she had gone ten moves ahead of him to preempt the whole problem.

So would he have listened?

“No,” he admitted finally.

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I am. But… I knew you. I know you. And I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. Not you, not a stranger, not anyone. The strangers I couldn’t help, but you I could.”

“But were you planning on ever telling me?”

“When I didn’t need a fucking cane to walk. When I didn’t need to have a whole pharmacy following me around all the time. When I was finally Commander Shepard again, yes. I was.”

“But the raid happened, you found out about Caitus, and I was the only one you trusted to start getting into your past. But what if I’d moved on, Shepard? What if I’d found someone else? Would you still have told me? Or would you just have let me believe you were dead for the rest of my life?”

The moment Arison dropped his gaze, he knew the answer.

She loved to suffer alone. If he had moved on, she would have just been a ghost in Havenwood until she died, and he would never have known that she was alive or about everything that she hadn’t told him before. It hurt.

Her hand left her knee, where it was braced, and slowly entered the space between them. It was tentative, weary. She was prepared to pull her hand back the moment he so much as gave the smallest tell that he didn’t want her. And as he watched her inch closer to him, he found that even with everything, he still wanted her touch.

When her fingers slowly grazed his hand, Garrus turned it over, so she could rest her palm against his.

She was so warm now, he could feel that even through his gloves. Her fingers used to feel so cold all the time, but at least now they didn’t feel like ice.

“How could you love me? After what a turian did to you?”

“Turians,” she corrected, though she didn’t seem upset by the correction. It was like she was just… clarifying some piece of trivia.

“Yeah. My point,” he spluttered, though he was still looking at her hand, at how her skin looked against his gloves, because he could imagine very clearly what turian talons had done to her. “How can you say that without screaming or something? While… This?” he asked, unable to move his gaze.

“I told you. I don’t remember much of it now.”

“That doesn’t mean that I don’t look like them!”

There was another touch, now, one on the scarred side of his face, beckoning him to look up. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want her to be looking another turian in the face while talking about this.

“Garrus…”

She moved her hand under his chin a bit more forcefully.

“You weren’t one of them. I didn’t choose you just because I wanted to hurt myself. You respected me. You followed orders. You—”

“I hurt you, Arison,” he insisted, finally looking back at her.

She shook her head very gently, holding his gaze as intently as she did everything.

“I didn’t say what happened to me didn’t leave its marks. I’m saying that I wanted what we had. Every minute of it. What we had was good, Garrus—”

“I made you bleed.”

“Hundreds of people have made me bleed before. And besides, I’m not the only person in the world who can’t get off unless there’s some sort of pain. Is it because that’s what my body did to cope? Yeah. Does that mean I shouldn’t work on it? No. But it’s not because there’s some sick fantasy I was playing in my head every time you fucked me. It was because, after everything, my body just ended up with some… very specific responses.”

And then, she trailed off, and he could see that there was something she wasn’t saying. And it was an offer. Maybe not for the moment, maybe not for months or years, but there was an offer hanging behind her words.

Sex wasn’t exactly anywhere near the forefront of his mind, which he was pretty sure was exactly how it should be with a conversation like this, but he hadn’t even been so much as able to have a drunken, stupid, one-night stand in five years. It hadn’t been intentional, like he was imagining Shepard showing up and demanding a detailed sexual history of the time she was gone. He’d been depressed out of his mind. He’d barely been able to get himself regular meals, much less be interested in anything more emotionally draining than ordering take out at a computerized kiosk and doing his damn job.

But, Spirits, he definitely still remembered every second they had gotten to themselves before she had disappeared.

“What do you want?” he asked once more, still holding her gaze so she couldn’t avoid the question again. “From me.”

“I’m not sure you can give it to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can barely stand me touching you right now.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she was right. It wasn’t because he thought she was ruined or dirty or broken or something, but because he felt guilt. Justified guilt? Probably not. But he had remembered thinking, every time they had sex, that despite the fact that she was Commander Shepard, she was so vulnerable without a gun and her armor compared to him. And he had been right. And she had intimately known it where he had only considered it.

But…

But he still loved her, didn’t he? And knowing what he did didn’t change that. It only made him hyperaware of how much he really had the capacity for hurting her, and there was nothing he wanted less than that.

“I’m not going to just assume. Please. Tell me what you want.”

Even if he was pretty sure it wasn’t the case, if she was asking for something casual, he wouldn’t be able to give her that, as much as he loved her and wanted to help her. But if she asked for something serious, where he could actually help her like he wished he could have for the last five years, then… that was a different case entirely.

“I know we can’t have exactly what we did before, I know that. I…”

She was struggling with saying, ‘I want’ that much was clear. She had lived so much of her life for others. It was why Garrus had started to fall for her. She was so driven and capable and smart and caring. And she still was. What he loved about her hadn’t changed at all.

“I want… I need your help. I missed you.”

But there was still no real ‘want’ in that sentence, so Garrus just waited, staring at her patiently.

“I… I want to be back together. Permanently. I understand if that’s not something you want or can even do after—”

He could already see her backtracking and catastrophizing. As if he was actually going to say no. After all his chances to leave, he hadn’t, and he wasn’t about to now. He had thought that had been obvious from the moment he stepped into her room.

“Arison, stop. I want that, too.”

But there was a stipulation, because he had the hard line to draw. For his own sake.

“But I want us to finally be working together again. You have to actually let me help you. Otherwise, this won’t work.”

“I’m going to suck at it,” Arison murmured, but her lips were beginning to quirk into something almost akin to a smile. She was admitting weakness, and this sort of start was really all he could ask of her.

“Yeah, you will,” he said with a turian approximation of a grin and a shrug of his shoulders, “but I like to think I’m pretty dedicated when I want to be.”

“It was dumb to wait for me,” Arison half-chastised as she closed the space between them to rest her forehead against his once more, like she had done the other day when she had first broken down her walls between them. It felt just as right as it always had.

“Is it really that dumb if I ended up being right?”

Arison gave a short but fond scoff.

“Yeah. It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of your feedback means so much to me. We'll be moving plot-ward soon, but Arison and Garrus just had a good bit to work out before they could work together again. And they still have a long way to go, but they're finally on the same page.


	25. Firsts, A Second Time

_It was somewhere around three in the morning cycle, and Garrus was completely unsurprised to find Arison in the hangar, standing at the weapon’s bench, her rifle taken apart down to its smallest components. It was meditative for her, he knew, taking something apart and putting it back together with expert precision. _

_“Any new mods?” Garrus asked as he sidled up beside her._

_"If I had more time, I would make my own,” Arison muttered._

_She had been cleaning as she went, with an oiled and stained rag sitting within reach. Her hands were black with oil as well. She paused, though, and used the back of her hand to wipe at her face. _

_“If one more of my ‘favorite stores on the Citadel’ sells me a subpar mod, I’m going to lose it.” _

_It was a funny mental image, since Garrus was pretty sure he’d only seen her ‘lose it’ once or twice, and even then she’d been in control in an entirely different way. Even when she couldn’t keep herself so rigid, she never did anything truly reckless. Killing Udina? Not her style, but she certainly hadn’t riddled him with bullets. It had been one bullet straight to the head. No suffering, no lasting pain. _

_Arison losing control was like when a ship’s engines stopped working with a good pilot at the helm: there wouldn’t be an explosion or a crash, because the descent was still regulated._

_"So you’ll what? Report them to C-Sec for false advertising?” he joked, easing his way so that their sides were just barely touching._

_She grumbled wordlessly at his smart-ass response, which meant that he was definitely right._

_"War profiteering should be one of the seven deadly sins,” she added after a second’s thought._

_He had heard enough about the more common human religions to know the basics of what sin was. He’d heard some from Ash when they had first met. He knew she subscribed to whatever religion it was Arison was referencing now. Ash and Arison had had some pretty serious conversations about it, if he remembered correctly. _

_“There’s only seven?” _

_“More than seven, but those are the worst ones. Hence the ‘deadly’ part.”_

_“So, what are your seven deadly sins? War profiteering and what else?”_

_As they had been talking, he had been watching her try to get one of the screws back in place. Despite the slightly magnetized hole for the screw, her fingers were shaking just enough that she couldn’t manage to get it in place._

_Her agitation was beginning to slip into the conversation, too, after the third time the screw landed back on the lightly magnetized surface of the workbench._

_“A body that doesn’t fucking work,” she hissed, now bracing her forearms on the edge of the workbench to better steady herself._

_“I could—” Garrus reached out to grab the screw as it hit the top of the bench again._

_Arison dropped the piece of metal she was holding like it had been heated up to burning._

_“I don’t need help,” she stated, suddenly sounding very calm._

_“You don’t need it, but I could—”_

_Arison turned her back to the table, leaning against it now, as casual as could be, as if she hadn’t been gently ebbing toward rage at herself a moment ago._

_“What are you doing up this early?” she asked as she cocked an eyebrow._

_“Hey, this is the normal amount of sleep for a turian,” he defended, putting his hands up jokingly. _

_“We have an hour until I was going to be on a comm call,” she offered. “Interested?”_

_He was pretty sure this was a distraction. She didn’t want his help, and she didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to fight either and if this was just a distraction… Well, then it was working pretty damn well. No one could say she wasn’t a master at getting what she wanted, even if it meant resorting to dirty tactics._

_“And then do you want me to clean this up?” he asked as he slid a hand to her waist._

_“No, because if I say yes to that, that’s what you’ll be thinking about for the next hour. And I want your mind somewhere else. Understand?”_

_“Yes, ma’am.”_

The gentle silence sat unbroken for a few strange minutes. Garrus felt like he should be doing something, like he should be throwing himself at the problem that was figuring out exactly what Caitus was doing now, but at the same time, he couldn’t. For the first time ever, she was letting him help her, and she needed a break. She ran herself ragged, she always had. To be there for her was to help her slow down, he had known for a long time.

So he just sat there, in the slightly uncomfortable position leaning forward on the hard chair, until he felt Arison pull away. It was clear from the way she settled back onto the bed that her back hurt.

“I need to take my next set of meds in an hour,” she provided after popping her back in several places. “I’m supposed to eat before I take them.”

And then she looked him dead in the eyes and spoke a series of words that left him pleasantly shocked.

“Can you go with me to the cafeteria?”

It wasn’t an ‘I want,’ statement, and it wasn’t outright saying she needed help, but this was way better a start than he had been expecting. Not that suddenly everything was fixed because she was vaguely reaching out for him, but it was a pretty damn serious gesture of goodwill.

He’d take that.

“I thought you said you’d suck at this,” he teased as he got up out of the chair as quickly as he could. He reached a hand out for her, to help her off the bed, and Arison eyed it like she usually did. She was strong; she didn’t need help; she didn’t need someone else to act as her fulcrum. And when she didn’t take it, he wasn’t surprised or offended.

What did humans call it when things had to happen in increments? Steps… Baby steps. That was how things were going to have to happen. In baby steps.

Once she was on her feet, at her full height, she adjusted her collar, and her black hair fell around her shoulders. He had never realized how long it was. Maybe this was five years of growth? He didn’t really know how human hair worked, he just knew that sometimes Arison got it cut. Now, though, it was passed her shoulders, and he couldn’t help but reach his gloved hand out to run a talon through the strands.

He’d felt it plenty of times before. She had liked it when he pulled at it, despite the fact that pulling a turian’s fringe would have been an excellent way to ruin the mood. It was soft, and even now it shined in the light. He couldn’t feel it now, through his gloves, but it was easy to remember the texture, how smooth it had been.

He hardly even realized what he was doing until Arison raised a confused glance to him.

He pulled his hand back and opened his mouth to give some response that probably wouldn’t have made much sense, when she asked,

“Do you still like it?”

And that took a second to process. Because he hardly remembered making any comment about it back when she would have cared about his thoughts on it.

“It’s not really you,” he said on reflex, but it didn’t take more than a second for him to realize that maybe that wasn’t something a human would want to hear. “I mean, I’m just used to it…”

He pushed the strand of hair back, trying to explain what he had been thinking before he gave his almost-insult.

“If I wear it like that…” she started with a hand inching its way up to Garrus’.

The moment her hand reached his, though, she faltered.

“That’s how Commander Shepard wore her hair.”

And then, far more quickly than Garrus had expected, Arison hardened again. It was like just remembering who she was supposed to be set her back ten steps. Her expression hardened, she turned from him, leaving his hand hanging in the air once her hair had slipped passed his talon, and walked toward the door.

“Arison,” he found himself almost-begging.

He knew healing wasn’t done in one conversation, but, Spirits, watching her like this was harder than he ever would have expected.

She had been right, he realized as she stopped in front of her doors, the way she did when she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how. She had been right to not tell him where she was, because this hurt far worse than thinking she was dead.

It hurt worse, but at least she was alive. And she was trying to let him help her. There wasn’t much more he could ask for, really.

She took in a deep breath, and it didn’t take a real C-Sec detective who hadn’t been mostly-fired to figure out that she was about to say something difficult.

“They shave human slaves. When they first pulled me off of Mindoir…” Then, much quieter, “It’s mine.”

"Yours or Commander Shepard’s?” he ventured in the most unassuming tone he could manage. No, the translators wouldn’t catch that his subvocals were humming with concern and sympathy, but hopefully she could tell he wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was trying to help.

“I’m hungry,” she said as she opened the door to the hall. Avoiding the issue. 

Avoidance was better than her breaking down or getting angry at him for trying to help.

Baby steps.

The walk to the cafeteria was slower than it would have been on his own, but it was a pleasant surprise to see that Arison was actually moving pretty well. After whatever sort of panic attack she had had earlier, he was expecting that she would have been completely drained. Apparently, her nap had helped, though, along with whatever medication she had taken, and so she walked steadily, even without the cane.

He had wanted to remind her about it before they left, but it seemed she was probably already at her limit for accepting anything from him, so he had let it go. Worst case scenario, he knew he could carry her, and she hadn’t been too upset by that earlier.

It was a little after the traditional dinner time, so there weren’t many people in the cafeteria, which was probably exactly how Arison had planned it.

“We didn’t see you at lunch today, Elissa,” one of the servers commented when they got close, and it didn’t take more than a glance to see that the server was definitely talking to Arison.

“I was distracted,” she lied with one of her patented reassuring smiles that had worked on every other crew member back in the day. She was good at convincing people she was doing well, even when she was at her worst, probably because she’d been doing it since she was a child.

But the name…

“Nwosu’ll be rolling in her grave if you skip more meals,” the server added, seriously now.

“She knew what she was getting into when took me on, so if she’s rolling in her grave, that’s her own fault. And besides, I’m not exactly running marathons here,” and then, more seriously, she asked, “How is Alicja doing?”

It took a moment of puzzling for Garrus to recognize the name. Arison’s little sister. She was using her dead baby sister’s name to hide who she was. Every time she heard someone calling after her, she had to be thinking about Mindoir, about what she saw. She was an expert at hurting herself, evidently.

“Alicja’s good! They took the splint off yesterday, my wife said. She’ll be back to soccer in no time!”

There was no one else behind them in line, and no one seemed to be concerned that the server was still talking to them from over the counter, so Garrus asked,

“You know Elissa pretty well. How long have you been here?”

The human gave him a blinding smile.

“Three years and counting! And thanks for being here, detective. We all thought no one would give a rat’s ass about us. Just throw us some money and hope nothing big happened with whatever those raiders were after.”

“Jamison’s daughter broke her leg last month,” Arison explained to Garrus as she put some vegetables on a plate. “She loves sports. She and her mom visit Havenwood three times a year to see him.”

Just like she had on the Normandy, she knew all these people and all their lives. And whatever they knew about her was guaranteed to be a lie. They didn’t even know her real name, and, knowing Arison, she even knew Jamison’s daughter’s birthday.

“We’re lucky to have Elissa here showing you the station. She took down those raiders faster than our security could have. They all don’t like shooting things. Good with a gun, and more importantly she’ll help out tomorrow!”

At this, Arison shook her head discreetly and hurried up spooning some grains onto her plate.

“Help?” Garrus asked.

“Yeah, she cooks pancakes with the kids for breakfast on Sundays!”

“Yeah?” Garrus asked, but this time it was directed at Arison, who was attentively paying sudden attention to the food in front of her, like she couldn’t decide what she wanted.

“I’m glad Alicja is doing well. You take care, Jamison,” Arison ordered, like she would have on the Normandy. And Jamison, despite the fact that he was a civilian and didn’t have a rank, responded just as anyone in the Alliance would have, probably just on instinct.

“You too, ma’am,” Jamison offered before Arison began to head directly a table in the back.

She was still walking well, and she was even balancing the food on her tray as she went. She had been nearly dead, and without the Cerberus budget, it still looked like Dr. Nwosu had done a good job. She’d even kept Arison in line, Jamison made it sound like. Garrus wished she was still alive, if only to thank her for what he was sure was the absolutely thankless job of trying to get Arison to take care of herself.

“The dextro tikka masala is pretty good, I’ve heard,” Jamison commented off-handedly after clearing his throat, and Garrus whipped back around.

Jamison had his eyebrows raised, like humans did when they were asking a question without saying anything. It wasn’t a judgmental question, though, but it didn’t take Garrus more than a second to understand what the human thought: that he’d been watching her leave for a less noble reason.

“Oh, I was just… making sure she got to the table safely,” Garrus insisted, tripping over his words.

But Jamison didn’t seem to believe him from the way he shrugged, like he was just going to accept a lie.

“Elissa’s done a lot for everyone here,” Jamison said, but it was a warning, and all things considered, that was a good thing. People here cared about Arison, apparently, enough to try to warn off a seven-foot tall and armed turian who they probably thought was part of some police force or another.

“I’m just here to help,” Garrus insisted.

There were a few options Garrus had, but the quickest of them was to just pretend that nothing had happened, so Arison wouldn’t ask him about it, so he just piled his plate with the orange meat and grain that was labeled as tikka masala and ducked away before Jamison could say anything more.

Once Garrus sat down across from Arison, he asked,

“You can cook?”

“No,” Arison answered quickly. “But pancakes are hard to mess up.”

“Did Marina rope you into that?”

“What, the breakfasts? She didn’t. I was craving pancakes one day, and then all the kids wanted some, and they didn’t care that I burned half of them. Then they wanted to do it every day, so I had to bargain them down to once a week. I’m pretty good at pancakes, nowadays.”

Then Arison turned back to her food.

Garrus took a tentative bite of his food only to find that, yeah, Jamison hadn’t been kidding when he said that it was good. It wasn’t like anything he’d had before, and it was clearly a dextro version of a levo meal, but he was pleasantly surprised. And when something brushed against his leg under the table, he was pleasantly surprised again, as Arison rested her calf against his own.

He pulled his gaze up to her only to find that she was still intently eating, pretending that she didn’t see his surprise.

She had never been physically affectionate, not when other people had been around, and it hadn’t just been because of regs about PDA in uniform. She was just a private person by nature, and that had never bothered him.

So he returned to his food.

It was nice, actually, for her to reach out, even if it wasn’t obvious. It was like there was something just for them in a room of other people.

“You cooked pancakes on the Normandy once,” Garrus ventured quietly after a while, and at the ship’s name, Arison whipped her gaze up to him.

It had been a bit of a disaster as he remembered it. She had tried to cook with chocolate, since that was apparently part of the recipe, and she had burnt some of it, setting off several fire alarms. Most of the crew had been gathered to watch her cook, though, since it was definitely a rare novelty on the ship, so no one had been particularly startled when the alarms were tripped. She had enjoyed that, though, and she’d actually been laughing by the end of it, with her half-seared breakfast.

“I like them,” she shrugged off.

All things considered, that was true, but it was clear there was something more that she was holding back. She held herself forward, physically, when she wanted to say something but was trying not to. It was hardly noticeable, really, but having known her for years meant that there were small ticks Garrus understood. It was almost like subvocals, the way her body betrayed whatever it was she was lying about or avoiding.

“Because…” he prompted.

He moved his leg against hers a bit, pressing into it. Hopefully it was showing that he was there for her. It wasn’t a gesture turians used, with spurs and all, but Arison had initiated this, so presumably it was human. So hopefully he wasn’t getting it wrong.

Apparently, it was the right thing to do, because, into her remaining vegetables, Arison admitted,

“My father used to cook pancakes for us. On Sundays.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the absence, I've been dealing with health issues. I'm back now for the foreseeable future!


	26. Competing with Shadows

“I have to go take those meds,” Arison said, motioning with her head toward the eastern wing.

“I guess Dr. Nwosu will roll in her grave a little less,” Garrus teased, pressing his leg against hers gently again.

“She’s been rolling in her grave since she was born.”

“You liked her,” Garrus stated, because that much had been obvious.

“She was a hardass,” Arison said, fondly. “She got me ready for the Alliance.”

This was the first time Arison had casually mentioned her first stay at Havenwood, and it took every bit of self-control he had not to let her know he was shocked. She had said she would try to reach out, he hadn’t expected her to do it twice in one day. Normally getting her to take care of herself was worse than pulling teeth could ever dream of being.

Then again, she had saved the galaxy and survived death at least once, so apparently putting her mind to things did make the impossible possible for her.

“I wish I could have met her,” he said softly.

He couldn’t meet Arison’s parents, but he had met Marina, and that felt awfully close to something like meeting family. And now that he was thinking about it, meeting Nwosu would have felt the same way. He probably would have liked her, too. She was an impressive person if she could bring Arison into line.

“She would have liked you,” Arison said with a roll of her eyes. “When I came crawling back to Havenwood, she was so disappointed in me. Not because I couldn’t move my own limbs. She just wanted me to reach out. Figuratively.”

“Did she know who you were?” Garrus asked, his subvocals dropping into sympathy that she couldn’t hear. So he set a hand down on the table, face up, as an offer.

“She took one look at me and knew I was the same kid from thirty-whatever years ago, and she knew who Commander Shepard was, she’d seen enough new feeds. She was smart; she put two and two together before I even got here. The first thing she said to me was, ‘You won’t be dying, not on my operating table.’ And then I knew I was fucked. Even Miranda hadn’t been that invested.”

Arison hadn’t reached her hand out to his, so Garrus pulled it back with only a second of awkwardness.

“Have you… talked to Miranda,” he broached gingerly. Because if there was anyone else who could help Arison get back up to speed, it was the woman who’d painstakingly pieced Arison back cell-by-cell over two years.

But Arison’s reaction came quickly. It took only a second for her eyes to narrow, for her jaw to set.

“No. U told you. You’re the only one who knows.”

“Other than Marina?”

“It’s time to take my meds,” Arison said as she pushed herself up to a standing position.

And then she paused, and Garrus found himself tensing, because it definitely looked for a moment like she was going to pass out. She just froze, and he was preparing to catch her before her head hit the table or the floor.

“I…” she started. 

And, by then, Garrus was standing, too. He hadn’t meant to, and people were definitely staring now, but he had reacted on instinct.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she finally said.

“Tomorrow,” he promised before making himself sit down and simply… watch… as she left. She didn’t want his help, and she needed to feel in control. It was almost nighttime anyway, and after everything that had happened since he had woken up, he was exhausted, too.

~~~

When he came to, Garrus found himself uncomfortably stretched out on the human bed, his neck lolling back. He turned onto his side to see that the pillows he had placed between his crest and carapace had fallen onto the floor. Asari and salarians had it so easy on this station, and they didn’t even know it, he considered blandly as he sat up and cracked his neck in several places.

As he pulled up the server, out of habit more than anything else, he found that he hadn’t received any notifications since he had met with Adrien. He also he found that, unsurprisingly, the Hierarchy seemed to be functioning quite well without him. Hercus was doing a damn good job, too. He apparently had started working with the asari in charge of rebuilding Palaven on some redesigns. There were some updates to something Ternian had tried to push through the financial committee, and the moment he read her name, he paused, thinking.

She had said he could reach out to her if he needed help, and from everything Garrus had read, she pretty clearly didn’t like Caitus.

He started a message to her, typing slowly as he tried to find what the best way to broach her about something definitely at least partially classified. He settled for a simple question, one that could lead into what he wanted to know, but it was easy enough to deflect or not answer.

He simply asked her why Caitus had never been promoted beyond corporal.

Once he sent that off, he began to change into his clothes, and by the time he was dressed and had holstered his pistol, the server alerted him to a message.

_He wasn’t higher leadership material. Not my words. _

_Ternian._

So evidently, she wasn’t in one of her seven-hour-long meetings, and she was willing to talk honestly about the man. That was definitely a start.

_Specifics?_

_Vakarian_

And before he could get up from the bed where he’d sat to type the message, he got a response. There was an encrypted channel that had been opened, between him and the general, something the server was capable of which he hadn’t made use of often before.

_T:_ _Perfect service record, bad attitude._

_V: That’s not really specific._

_T: Doesn’t sound like you’re taking care of yourself._

And now Garrus hesitated. If he was too honest, if she suspected exactly how bad this was, there was the distinct possibility she would do what every turian had been trained to do: close ranks and pretend nothing had happened. But if there was anyone he trusted at this point who would know anything about all this, it was her. She had been just as tired as him and just as out of her element. She obviously cared about other people, and she definitely at least had a distaste for Caitus.

But how to even be honest about this? What the hell could he say that would seem palatable and understandable? Just saying that Caitus had abused his power was the greatest underestimation of the century. Detailing exactly what he knew, though, was at best tasteless and definitely a breach of Arison’s trust.

_V: There’s an on-going investigation._

_T: Your appointment?_

_V: Yeah. Third party investigation. And it doesn’t look good for him._

_T: Not shocked. Not against turians, I’m guessing?_

_V: Not yet. _

_T: What specifics?_

_V: What sort of bad attitude?_

_T: Rampant xenophobia. Worse than normal. Looked bad if we let him get too high up and the rest of the galaxy heard him talk, apparently. _

_V: Any connections to slavery?_

_T: Helped break up a ring a few years back. Don’t know the specifics. Could look into it for you. More interesting than anything else I’m supposed to be doing._

_V: Please. Forward me details if you can._

_T: Will do. Hear from you soon, Vakarian. Don’t get yourself killed. The old guard protects their own._

As Garrus made his way out of his room and to the cafeteria for a meal, he couldn’t shake this idea he had. On Omega, he had been prepared to do whatever it took to bring down the gangs. He had never resorted to anything beyond some pretty creative ways to kill people, but…

What if Caitus had been ordered to infiltrate a slavery ring in order to bring it down? And in order to do that, he had to gain their trust? And what if he had done what he did to Arison in the name of duty? What if she was just a casualty in an attempt to bring justice?

And the worst question? The one that had him feeling to his stomach?

Would he have done something like that for the greater good? Destroy one child to save hundreds?

Suddenly, he wasn’t hungry anymore, even if he knew the answer to that question.

He wouldn’t. That wasn’t justice. And even if that had been the case, even Caitus had had the best intentions, he owed her protection or something afterwards. If she had been a means to an end to save others, she should have been taken care of when all was said and done. And it was a given fact that no part of Havenwood had ever been funded by any turian.

And there would have been other ways to break down the ring. And the report on Arison had said that it was an Alliance-Justicar task force that had brought her in. No, whatever Caitus had done to bring down the other ring had to have been unrelated.

Garrus was walking toward the cafeteria dazed, on autopilot, so when he heard laughter and talking from the open doors, he stopped in his tracks. He rounded the corner only to come to a halt.

Several tables had been pushed together, and on the middle table, there was a portable stove top. Around the table there were a dozen children, and over the stove stood Arison.

Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail down her back, which looked just as foreign on her as it did when she wore it down, and she was smiling, actually smiling, as she handed out pancakes fresh off of the stovetop. She looked happy, and, back on the Citadel, in the apartment that probably now belonged to some rich asshole politician, Garrus could remember the offhanded conversation he had had with her. He had mentioned kids, and she had laughed it off. She brushed off the idea of getting married the same way.

He stood in the doorway for longer than he had planned, just watching.

The kids were laughing, and it was the strangest domestic scene in the sterile, cold place, back to back with the revulsion he had been drowning in just moments before.

Arison had an older child, a young salarian, pouring the batter onto the pan for her, and she seemed to have the timing down to an art, because every time she flipped them over, they were perfectly golden, nothing like the blackened ones she had tried to make on the Normandy.

“It’s good for her,” Marina said from beside Garrus, startling him.

He had been paying so much attention to the weird vignette, looking at how happy Arison was, getting sad about that of all things, that he hadn’t heard her coming up behind him.

“Yeah?” he asked, trying to rip his gaze from Arison, who still hadn’t noticed him, not yet. And he almost didn’t want her to. He had never seen her like this before, and while it felt almost like he was an intruder, he was fixated by this image of Arison that he had never been exposed to before.

“She had no one to make her childhood less miserable. So she enjoys being that person to others. And her cooking isn’t as vile as it was a few years ago,” Marina commented with a fond grin.

She really was like Arison’s aunt in some weird way.

“She told me why she cooks pancakes,” Garrus murmured as Arison started to break up a small squabble between two children by handing them more food.

“Did she?” Marina asked, and she sounded genuinely surprised.

“Her dad, right?”

“You know that she trusts you more than anyone else in the galaxy, right?”

Did he know that? She had let him in when she hadn’t trusted anyone else, and before he had been to Havenwood, he would have said he did know that. But Marina and Nwosu had known her since she was a child. Hell, Nwosu even could get Arison to listen to her, something Garrus had never seen anyone succeed in outside of direct military orders.

“I—”

He wasn’t even sure of what he was going to say, though, because Arison finally glanced up, and the moment she noticed him, he expected her grin to drop. She would revert back to the small, sad smiles she’d been managing, probably just to make him feel better.

But it didn’t.

The moment her light blue eyes met his, she didn’t look embarrassed that he had seen this side of her, and she didn’t look sad to be reminded of a world beyond the clamoring kids ahead of her. She just nodded to him and returned to flipping the pancakes.

And that gaze had him speechless. When they had first started whatever it was they had had, he hadn’t been able to believe that he’d done anything to deserve her, and that feeling hit him full-force again. This woman who had been shown no mercy as a child was at her happiest when giving others something she hadn’t been given.

“Those kids, the ones that died, Arison knew them then?”

“Two of them. The third was new.”

Right, Marina had said she hadn’t even had time to do her intake on the third child. So no wonder Arison had been so desperate in that bar when she had grabbed for him. It made sense now, and Garrus was about to finally step forward. There was enough space at Arison’s side that he could slide in and try to help some, but his omnitool pinged with a message.

Reflexively, he opened it to see that, not only was the message from Ternian, and not only did it have an attachment, but she had written only two words in the main body.

_Be careful._

“I need to read this,” Garrus said to Marina softly.

He didn’t want to read this here, not with Arison nearby, not when she was actually happy.

And as he turned to leave, his finger hovering over the button to open the message, he saw Arison look back up for him, but her smile faltered as soon as she saw that he was planning to leave. That was the exact opposite of what he had wanted, so Garrus lamely waved a hand to his omnitool as his explanation before leaving fast enough that he wouldn’t have to see her happiness fade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, is it a hint of plot I see here?


	27. Blow the Whistle . . .

The attachment wasn’t long, only two pages. It was a debriefing Caitus had been ordered to write for his superiors about the mission where took down one of the larger slavery rings in turian space. It was as formal and short as it could be without seeming insubordinate; Caitus clearly didn’t like to write.

It was nothing surprising or really interesting. Caitus claimed that he had stumbled onto a smuggling ring during a trip to a turian colony and that looking into that smuggling operation had led him to a collective of slavers. He had gotten approval from his CO to pursue the lead, and when all was said and done, there were thirty dead slavers on Invictus, and three hundred slaves of several different races were freed.

Caitus said that the slavers fought back, and that was why there were none to bring to justice alive, and even if his CO had believed it then, it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together now. No one in the smuggling operation was named, and there was no record of any of them even facing justice.

Caitus had known these slavers and had killed them all for some reason. Maybe they were threatening to tell someone about his… interests. He had been a lieutenant colonel at the time, and he was promoted to colonel half a year after he wrote the report.

So, it was simple. Caitus had been doing this for years. And hiding it by killing anyone who threatened to reveal anything. At least Caitus hadn’t done what he did in the name of duty. That would have been… well, not worse… just a different sort of stomach-wrenchingly vile.

Garrus had opened the document in the atrium, his back to the wall, in an area where none of the security cameras would be able to see what he was looking at, and now he opened the encrypted message system Ternian had set up.

_V: What about the smugglers?_

_T: Still in Arcturus?_

_V: Why?_

_T: Hoping you didn’t tell many people. You’re not hard to find. Asking questions is a good way to get spaced._

_V: So you get what I’m saying, about the smugglers?_

_T: People have tried this before._

_V: Let me guess, they’re dead._

_T: “Missing”_

_T: Got a message Caitus wants to meet. Opening the document must have tripped something on his end._

_V: Don’t meet with him. _

He was immediately typing at full speed, his heart racing. He hadn’t wanted to put anyone else in danger, and Ternian was on the same ravaged former-colony as Caitus. And it was easy to imagine at this point exactly what the colonel was capable of. Garrus was in the middle of a long message, warning her against even speaking with Caitus, when someone came to stand in front of him.

Garrus quickly closed the encrypted channel as he whipped his gaze upward.

Arison stood in front of him with a searching expression.

It was strange to see her at a low angle, and even stranger to think for a split second about the fact that she was always looking at him from a similar angle. She smelled like cooking oil, and her hair was still pulled back in the single tail behind her head.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re scared of something.”

She wasn’t a mind-reader, he knew that, but she always saw straight through him. They’d known each other for years, too, and this was the same sort of thing she used to pull on all the crew members.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Garrus offered while lowering his omnitool.

It was a stupid move, because he couldn’t hide that he’d been frantically typing. And if Arison wanted, she could hack through anything he set up to protect his software in probably half an hour.

She looked at him long and hard before realizing that her sleeves were still rolled up, bearing her patchwork skin. She began to roll the fabric down, but at least she wasn’t trying to act like that wasn’t her intention, to hide her scars.

“Everyone here knows,” he commented, his eyes glued on her movement.

What was she trying to achieve? Who was she even trying to lie to anymore? There wasn’t anyone else in the atrium, and the camera weren’t synced up to some live-feed anywhere off-station.

“I don’t like to know,” she offered into her shoulder as she unrolled and rebuttoned the final sleeve. But she hadn’t forgotten about his frantic typing, clearly, because she settled into parade rest and waited, waited for him to tell her exactly what had him scared.

She had said scared, hadn’t she? Was he scared?

He knew the answer immediately. He was. Not for himself, but for the tired general who had apparently decided to put her life on the line for his investigation. Caitus was capable of things Garrus could only get sick at imagining, and who knew what the man would sink to. Ternian had mentioned her wife, that she missed her. Would Caitus go after Ternian’s wife?

Yeah, he was scared, because he was tired of people dying around him, especially because of him.

“I have a contact close to Caitus,” Garrus started.

And immediately, Arison stiffened.

“Not close to him personally,” he rushed to correct. Spirits, he didn’t want to know anyone who was friends with someone who could do the things Caitus had. “But she looked into some things for me, and Caitus found out. I’m worried for her.”

“What was she looking into?”

“Caitus ‘broke up’ a slavery ring a while back. I wanted to know the details.”

Even if truth was what Arison had clearly wanted, even just talking about the man was upsetting her. He could see her muscles tightening and her eyes glazing over. And he immediately wished he had lied, because seeing that smile on her face earlier had been what he had been looking for for years.

“Arison,” he offered gently, reaching for one of her hands.

He expected her to rip away from him, but instead, she leaned into the contact, and, after a moment, he could see her settling back into her skin. He tightened his grip on her hand.

“Let’s not talk about this.”

“We need to prove what he did, Garrus,” she hissed quietly.

“Yeah. And we need you to not crash and burn. If you want to talk about this. About what happened, let’s do it somewhere you feel safe.”

“We’re not talking about it,” she bit out.

“Okay. Alright. We’re not.”

And then a message came through the encrypted channel, and Garrus pulled his hand from hers to look. It was an address from Palaven and after it, a name: Pallas Ternian. And then another message.

_T: Keep an eye on her if something happens. Worry about yourself for now though._

“Your contact?” Arison asked slowly.

“You’re getting upset,” Garrus ventured as he got to his feet.

“We can’t let him hurt anyone else.”

“She’ll be fine. She’s one of the most capable people I’ve ever met.”

And at least he wasn’t lying about that. He knew that she had managed to mount an actual defense of Palaven against the Reapers which had pretty much been asking the impossible. And she had succeeded. If there was anyone who could stand up to Caitus successfully, it was her.

It was the right thing to say, apparently, since Arison’s breathing slowed, and she eventually gave a bit of a nod.

“Did you have any of the pancakes you made?” he then asked. Because it was definitely passed time for her breakfast, and he had the sneaking suspicion that she had either forgotten to eat or chosen not to.

“Those are for the kids,” Arison said with a shrug, proving his suspicions right. But then she reconsidered. “There’s dextro batter left. I could make some for you, if you wanted it.”

“Are you saying I’m a kid?” Garrus teased, and finally it seemed like Arison had calmed back down, because she let out a scoff and shook her head.

“Do you want them or not?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“As long as you don’t burn them? Absolutely.”

“That was one time,” she muttered as she started back toward the cafeteria. “And besides, there was sawdust in that pancake mix, so it wasn’t my fault.”

“Uh huh,” Garrus teased back.

Even if he couldn’t get Ternian out of his mind, not entirely, even if he did really believe that she could handle herself, he was humming out exactly how much he cared about Arison, and he was even sort of glad she couldn’t hear it.

~~~

It wasn’t until they had finished eating that business managed to eke its way back into the conversation, and not for Garrus’ lack of avoiding it.

Arison had seemed… relaxed. Probably more than he had ever seen her before. Even on the Citadel when she had been ordered to take R and R, she hadn’t really done much more than pretend to follow those orders. And her cooking really wasn’t bad, which Garrus hadn’t even pretended to hide his astonishment at.

“I think this actually might not kill me,” he had commented once he had finished eating.

She was still pushing most of the food around her plate, and she’d only taken a few bites so far.

“If I wanted you dead, Garrus, you would never see me coming,” she retorted with a grin growing on her face.

She was a ghost when she wanted to be, she wasn’t kidding about that. He couldn’t count how many times he could only locate her in a fire fight by where shots might have been coming from. And also that grin looked nice, and he wanted to see it more. A lot more.

“Look, you’re just not renowned for your cooking. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I cook ramen just fine, thank you very much.”

“And breakfast,” he noted, using his fork to push one piece of her pancake closer to her on her plate.

“I’m not on the stims anymore,” Arison said, pushing the piece back towards him with her own fork. “I don’t need to eat like I did.”

“I’m pretty sure that you’re still supposed to actually eat.”

“You’re not a doctor,” she responded petulantly before relenting and actually eating for a while.

Most of the kids had left the cafeteria, which meant that it was actually quiet all things considered. The people finishing their night shifts were too tired to talk much, and the people waking up for the day shifts were nursing coffee more than anything else.

There were three kids still left, though, one of whom was actually a turian. She was young, probably around seven or so, and she had clan markings that Garrus didn’t recognize off the top of his head. She looked happy, though, and when she spoke, he could hear her subvocals humming with contentment.

“That’s Denae,” Arison commented, apparently having followed his gaze across the room.

“I’m just not used to see other turians here,” Garrus said with a bit of a shrug, because he wasn’t. He hadn’t seen a single other turian in the past few days and considering that he’d been working in the Hierarchy for the last half a decade, it was strange to go more than a few hours without seeing another turian.

“It isn’t common,” she admitted. “But her stepmother is human, and she did some research.”

“Do you know everything about everyone here?” Garrus asked, mostly rhetorically.

She gave a playful shrug, because they both knew the answer.

And then she paused for a second and her gaze softened a bit. It was a vulnerable look, which made sense when the next thing she said was more of an apology than anything else.

“I don’t know everything about you anymore,” she prompted softly.

“Sure, you do,” Garrus brushed off as he sat back in his chair.

He wasn’t lying. Nothing had changed for five years. It was like he’d buried her picture and walked into a fog with no light at the end, only her showing up in his apartment with not even so much as a single kind word on her lips. But now…

“No new hobbies?”

“Does getting take-out count as a hobby?”

“How is your sister?”

“Blackmailing me to get me to talk to her once in a while.”

“And your dad?”

Garrus had been prepared for another quick, witty response, because he’d missed this banter. He’d missed this. It was almost like things were normal. But his father? She knew that was a sore subject. She had to know.

“Definitely wouldn’t like the fact that I’m here and not single-handedly keeping the Hierarchy running, or whatever it is he thinks I actually do.”

“What do you do?” she asked, lowering her voice now. Which was strange, because he had definitely thought that when she had hacked into the secure server to send those first messages to him, she would have pried more. She wasn’t nosy, but they would have been right there.

“I pretend like I know things. I probably look like an ass to everyone else who knows what they’re doing. I get a Spectre killed and then get to join one of the most powerful positions in the government? Not a great look,” he teased.

Arison didn’t respond, though. She didn’t try to make a joke or anything. She just sat there for a moment, staring at him. And then she said, “That Spectre isn’t dead.”

She sounded serious, but at every single chance she’d gotten, she had been so happy to tell him that she wasn’t Commander Shepard anymore. So what had changed all of a sudden?

“Isn’t she?” he asked.

“Hmm,” was her noncommittal response, and all energy the conversation had had slowed to a complete halt.

Before she could dodge away or come up with some distraction, Garrus realized this was another moment to pounce. Maybe she would talk about something now that she was feeling safer. Maybe she would let him in another step. That was what it was going to take, small step after small step, but that was what recovery was, wasn’t it?

“Who are you, here, then? Other than… the name.”

“I’m Elissa Goodman. I worked in maintenance on the Citadel, and I grew up on Mindoir.”

A good lie had to include enough truth to make it believable. The best lies were the ones that skirted reality just barely, Garrus had seen that time and time again, just starting in C-Sec. She chose a name she would always respond to. She knew enough about the Citadel and mechanics to pass with that job, and she did grow up on Mindoir, even if only for eight years.

“And you came up with all this while under the rubble of the Catalyst?” he asked, fully intending to phrase it gingerly, but the question came out a lot more accusatory than he intended.

“Yes.”

“While burned on… what? Fifty percent of your body? With how many broken bones? And fried implants you just… came up with this?”

“Forty-six,” Arison corrected, evidently at a reflex, because she continued without missing a beat. “I had thought about it before. I just… enacted a plan I had had.”

“What? ‘A plan for when I end an entire war on my own and can’t let anyone help me knowing it’s me’ sort of plan? You thought that out?”

The cafeteria was quiet now, with almost no one else in it, and Garrus could only barely realize that he was whispering now, incredulously. He had known Arison could withstand just about anything, but he couldn’t shake that image he’d considered before, when he learned she had torn off her dog tags and crawled away from the scene just to avoid showing weakness. It was, first of all, absolutely insane. Second, it was so horrifically her. He could imagine exactly the determined look on her face as she dragged her burned body across rubble and—

“I wanted to die, Garrus,” she said quickly. “Anderson was dead. I’d done my service, and everything was falling apart around me. I was going to die just like my mother had, and I was happy with that. I came to terms with it. And then? Then I woke up, charred and broken, and I knew that I wasn’t going to get even a second of peace. I wasn’t going to die, because, apparently, someone out there didn’t think I deserved that.”

And then, mostly talking to herself, she murmured, “I wanted to die.”

“And then Nwosu told you she wasn’t letting you?” Garrus ventured, recalling what she had said earlier about how invested the doctor had been in keeping her alive.

“And then she had to go and get shot in the head,” she bit out.

At first, Garrus had no idea who Arison was angry at, but the moment her lips turned down further into a frown and she brought a hand to her face, he understood.

“Do you want to lay down?” he asked softly, leaning forward and reaching a hand out to at least get her attention. He didn’t need to guess at what was replaying in her head. Hao had said it was a massacre once Nwosu had gone down.

“I was talking them down, Garrus. They were listening to me,” Arison insisted into her hand. “And then she startled them running in, and… Christ, she went down so fast. And then there was blood just… everywhere, from the kids’ room, from her…”

“Arison,” he interrupted. It was forceful, but he didn’t need the software in his visor to tell him that her heart rate was spiking, and the last thing she needed was to be having a panic attack a hall and three floors away from her meds.

“For a woman who knew everything, she was so stupid!” Arison half-gasped, half-laughed into her hands.

She was only going to spiral from here, Garrus knew instinctively, so in an instant, he was already out of his seat and kneeling to her side, trying to angle her so she would look at him.

“Arison, you need to calm down.”

“—could recite entire textbooks but didn’t know when to stay the fuck away and not die.”

“Arison—"

“And they killed the kids, Garrus. Their blood was leaking out into the hallway. And I didn’t even know, or I would have made it slow and—”

She was babbling now, and he could tell that she barely knew where she was. She was reliving it and just… relaying to him what she was thinking while she watched it all happen again. She wasn’t responding to her name, she was barely there, so Garrus resorted to the oldest thing he could think of to reel her out of whatever exact moment in the past she was stuck in.

“Shepard!” he called out, trying to bring her hand from her face, so she could look around her and see that she wasn’t in the eastern wing and there weren’t bodies next door and Nwosu wasn’t on the ground.

It worked.

That was her name, almost more so than anything else. Arison was her first name, but her last name was her legacy, even if she was trying to pretend it wasn’t. Commander Shepard had saved every single person who could enjoy breathing in the galaxy. It was the name he’d called out first in firefights and then later in fondness.

She moved her hand into her hair, which was still pulled back mostly, and she was looking directly in Garrus’ eyes. Even if the name had jostled her, she seemed to be realizing where she was, even if it happened a breath or two at a time.

Of the people left in the cafeteria, there was one tech, Jamison, and one kitchen hand who was cleaning tables, and Garrus could see that they were all staring. Her real name had gotten her attention, but definitely everyone else’s at the same time.

“Let’s go upstairs for a while,” he offered while trying to ignore the confused looks they were getting.

“I’m…”

She was starting a lie, so it was time to pre-empt it. Sort of rudely.

“You need to calm down. We can do that there better than here, you know that.”

He didn’t have a degree, but he knew her. He knew how she had needed to retreat when things got bad, and she couldn’t lie about that to him. She was stubborn, so Spirit’s damned stubborn, so Garrus had more prepared to encourage her to listen, but Arison just gave a single bob of her head.

It took at least ten minutes, ten painful, long minutes to get Arison to her room.

And once she was there, he got her two more of the same pills as last time. She took them, and once he had helped her onto her bed, it didn’t take long for her to drift off into a fitful sleep.

He pulled the chair back to where he had sat before, staring at the assorted files lying around the room, listening as Arison tossed in her sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely love reading comments. They make my day, and as an extrovert who can't leave the house, I am lonely!  
As a side note, this project has spanned such a strange amount of time for me. I was writing chapter 3 the night my grandfather died. Now, I'm chapter 34 as the world is locked down in a pandemic which we'll feel the repercussions of for years. Things seem... unreal.


	28. . . . And Take Refuge in the Following Temporary Silence

There were so many files sitting around the room. Arison was breathing deeply in her sleep, and Garrus found himself simply staring at the forest’s worth of paperwork littering the ground. Who even made paper anymore? Did Havenwood pay for Marina’s fail-safe plan, or did she pay out of pocket for the luxury of being able to remove all evidence of her work?

At least Marina had the files for Jane Doe 19 safely back in her own hands.

Garrus winced.

He had thought of that stack of horrific facts like it belonged to someone other than the woman sleeping beside him. They didn’t belong to Jane Doe 19, even if that was what the label read. That history belonged to Arison, the woman who had taken the world by storm without ever once showing fear.

It was so much easier to think of some faceless kid, scared, being admitted to Havenwood with scars and broken bones, unable or unwilling to speak, but imagining it was Arison, thirty or whatever years younger? Having been clawed apart by a turian and chained to a bed? That was a completely different problem altogether, because it was impossible for him to imagine why someone would do those things to anyone, much less a kid. And even more impossible than that was thinking that it was Arison who had survived all that to become the woman she was.

It made sense, in a sick way, when he looked back. There were any number of things, small things, that whispered that she’d experienced horror, but with everything she’d been through that was public knowledge, Garrus hadn’t questioned it.

She had survived Mindoir, slavery, Akuze, death, a suicide mission, and then the destruction of the Catalyst. She had wanted to die, she had admitted that quick enough, and it seemed like maybe she just couldn’t.

No wonder she had more nightmares and night terrors than she ever did restful sleep.

Almost like she could hear his thoughts, Arison shuddered in her sleep, and Garrus found himself bringing a hand to the top of her head and just holding it there. After a moment, she relaxed back into her sleep, and he grabbed one of the files that was half-way under her bed, keeping his hand in place on her head.

He was going to be here for a while, so he might as well at least be doing some work he could manage one handed. Sure, he could pull his hand back, but her hair was soft, and she was warm, and if that faintest bit of touch helped her relax, then he was going to bend over backwards to keep helping.

He flipped open the almost-yellow file and was faced with another intake form, similar to the one he had seen for Ja—Arison. The patient was a nine-year-old human, taken into Havenwood in 2159. He was a former slave. And—

The words assault and trauma and abuse… They all just shot their way into Garrus’ mind like bullets. Spirits, he didn’t want to read this. He knew these things happened. He had heard about it, but the slavery ring breakups he’d assisted with in C-Sec had been… tangential team-ups with other forces. He’d never actually been to a bust. People were brutalized, he knew that, but he had been doing good work to stop it, and he hadn’t had to actually see with his own eyes what other people were capable of.

Caitus, decorated war hero and perfect turian, had raped kids.

Was it a power thing? Was it because he just hated other races?

Just trying to understand it had Garrus feeling dirty. And he didn’t want to be trying to understand this man with Arison so close by. It was just like before, when he didn’t want to read Ternian’s document too close to her. She’d been through enough. This was her fight, but she wasn’t alone, and, Spirits, Garrus didn’t want her hurt any more.

Marina had talked about piecing pottery back together, and if that was what had happened to Arison, there was almost no pottery left to be repaired. All gold glue with fried implants and dermal transplants.

Garrus put the file back where he found it, because he couldn’t read more. And he knew without a doubt that every file in the room was at least tangentially related to people who had arrived at Havenwood after time in slavery. She lived in this room haunted by hundreds of other people who had suffered, who probably weren’t even alive anymore after the war.

And how many had gotten justice before the end?

He had come here because he’d heard kids were killed in a raid. That was how Shepard had lured him back into her life, despite the fact that she had hurt him worse than anyone else ever had before. A rocket to the face was better than having his years-long fantasy of reuniting with Shepard ripped apart with just the first few words she had said to him.

She had been desperate, desperate enough to actually ask for help. Marina had said so, and it wasn’t just because she had found Caitus. It was because those three kids had died.

In the cafeteria, she had talked about the blood leaking out from that door, the one next to the office.

Why had they even gone to the eastern wing? They clearly knew the building’s layout considering how fast they had broken in. They’d even known how to disable the cameras. So why hadn’t they gone to the northern wing where most of the offices were? And why do all that work for just a file that no one could even seem to find?

Why hire mercenaries to delete some data? Why not buy off an employee? Then no one would have ever probably found out something was missing.

And why the kids before the data?

What could the mercenaries have possibly said that would require them to go into the room and shoot the kids?

Because they had to have overheard something, right?

Garrus ripped his hand away from Arison’s head and immediately got to his feet.

They had to have heard something, because why else kill them? If the mercenaries had really wanted to kill kids, they would have rampaged up and down the whole hall. Because they were just there for the data, right?

Garrus found himself in the elevator and then outside of the office where Nwosu died. He was staring between the two doors, when a tech nearly ran into him.

“You okay?” the asari asked, looking genuinely concerned. “You’re the detective, right? The one—”

“The door logs. I need to see the door logs,” Garrus said quickly, nearly stumbling over the words, because his mind was moving too fast, and the picture it was building, the pieces it was fitting together, were nauseating.

“From the raid? The terminal in that office doesn’t work anymore, but the atrium might—”

“Thanks,” Garrus said over his shoulder as he broke into a sprint to the atrium.

Fact one: The raiders had known the layout of Havenwood.

The secretary at the atrium desk took one look at Garrus and immediately stepped out of her chair and to the side. Garrus huffed out some apology as he logged into the security logs that he had archived from that night so they wouldn’t be overwritten.

Fact two: The kids had been killed before the mercenaries even went into the office to upload that file.

He pulled up the door logs and began to scan through the eastern wing’s records. Since the security systems had been down, Garrus had had to instate approximate times based on the manual information each door had stored rather than what should have uploaded to the system.

Fact three: The room the kids were in was further into the hall than the office.

There, spelled out across the screen was the fourth hard fact.

The door to the room had been opened before the door to the office. That made sense, of course it did, because everyone had said the kids were killed first, but the kids were killed before even one mercenary stepped foot in the office. There was no reason for all of them to go out of their way to kill three young witnesses. One mercenary could have done it while the other started the hack.

Unless.

Unless the data wasn’t really what they were after.

Because Caitus had gone after kids.

Because Marina had said she hadn’t even had time to do an intake on the newest patient in that room.

Garrus went into the patient logs and searched by date of death to find the three kids who had had been killed. The smallest data file was on a boy, and when Garrus opened it, his heart sank.

He was taken from his family immediately after the war had ended by some enterprising slavers taking advantage of the chaos. He had been found years later in a random sweep on a cargo hold where someone had tried to smuggle him to his next owner.

That was all the information in his file short of the scheduled date for both an intake by Dr. Nwosu and Marina.

He hadn’t clumsily ordered some mercenaries to get him a file. He had ordered mercenaries to get rid of a witness, and the data was either a ruse or a secondary goal. And the other kids were collateral damage.

But that was what Caitus had been doing this whole time, wasn’t it? Destroying lives and pretending they were all collateral damage. And it had just been… sheer dumb, bad luck for him that Arison was on the station. Right?

“Are you okay, Detective?” the secretary asked, but her voice barely registered.

Unless Caitus had pieced together the impossible, right? Because the only people who knew who Arison was were the doctors. And what would he have to gain by not killing her first. One kid to testify wouldn’t mean anything, Garrus knew that from the bottom of his heart. But Commander Shepard, if she was alive, would be one hell of a witness to ignore, even if it happened decades ago. Especially if there was another witness or two to back her up.

He couldn’t have known she was there, because leaving her alive didn’t make sense. It had to be dumb luck that Arison was at Havenwood at the same time as the raid. It had to have been.

“Detective?”

Ternian had tripped something in the server when she had searched after Caitus. He was actively making sure that no one learned anything about it. And lived.

Ternian was walking straight into a trap.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments! I finally wrote (2k words!) yesterday in less than 45 minutes, so I'm back on track!


	29. Mary and Martha Mourned Twice

_V: You’re walking into a trap. _

_V: Don’t meet with him._

_V: Lay low and wait until I can get more proof. _

_V: And tell your wife to be careful._

_V: General, this is bad. _

_ V: General?_

_V: Ternian? _

There was no response, and Garrus was still sitting in the atrium secretary’s chair, his eyes glued to his omnitool, desperately hoping that she was just in one of her meetings. Or asleep. Or maybe just ignoring him. Those were all things he could cope with. But if she was dying because of his curiosity? Because he didn’t just have Arison hack into the records instead of going through the almost-right-route to get them? Those weren’t things he could cope with.

His pulse was racing, and he hadn’t even noticed that the secretary had left until she returned with the head of security. The asari has noticeably less hostile than the last few times he had seen her, weirdly enough. 

“What is it?” Sarisa demanded.

“I look that bad, huh?” Garrus tried to joke as his eyes darted back to his omnitool.

Still no new messages.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, war hero,” she commented without sounding particularly invested. “So do I need to start preparing for another attack on this facility or what?”

Caitus wouldn’t outright attack Havenwood. That would be beyond stupid, wouldn’t it? But then again, Garrus wasn’t even sure what his motives were beyond killing anybody who could reveal his secrets. And why now? Why was Caitus suddenly concerned about all this now?

Attacking Havenwood wouldn’t help him with anything, not really.

But was it worth it to bet on that? How many lives were at stake if this was a miscalculation? There was the distinct possibility that Ternian had already died because Garrus hadn’t been paying enough attention, not solving the puzzles fast enough.

He couldn’t have any more casualties. Especially not civilians.

“Be on alert, but don’t let anyone off the station know.”

It looked like Sarisa was about to say something, and from the look on her face, it was going to be something biting, but she apparently reconsidered.

“Just give me a heads up if anything changes,” she said, “because I don’t plan on dying in this station, not like Amanda did.”

It took Garrus to a moment to realize that she was talking about the last head of security. He’d seen how she died on the security footage, and Sarisa probably had, too.

“You’ll be the first to hear,” Garrus promised before he could realize that she probably wouldn’t. Odds were that he’d be telling Arison first and then Sarisa. But in the meantime, Marina needed to know what he’d learned. Arison was sleeping, and… he didn’t really want to tell her this. Not yet.

“Where are you going?” Sarisa demanded as Garrus took off down the hallway.

He didn’t bother to answer as he broke into a sprint until he reached the door to the common room Marina shared. He knocked, and no one answered, but as he was turning to leave, Marina opened the door.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, immediately throwing open the door once she saw the expression on Garrus’ face.

“Caitus wasn’t after the documents. Or at least they weren’t his main goal. He was after the kid. The one you hadn’t done an intake on. He was a slave. Like Arison. He must have known something about Caitus and—”

“Slow down,” Marina demanded as she ushered him inside, passed a very confused looking roommate, and into her room, where she’d sat him before. “Okay, explain to me what you have. Slowly.”

And so Garrus took a deep breath, placed his hands on the arms of the chair, and did his best to lay out what he had realized.

And by the end of his whole barely-comprehensible slurry of explanations and ideas, there still hadn’t been a single message from the secure server. Marina evidently noticed his occasional, nervous glances down at his omnitool, because she asked,

“No news?”

“No. Ternian’s probably dead, and it’s my fucking fault,” Garrus hissed out, trying to make himself realize the situation he was really in. One of the few people who had really, seriously given a shit about him in years was probably “missing” in the same way everyone else who had tried to look into Caitus weas. Which meant she wasn’t even going to get a proper burial or anything. Her wife wouldn’t have anything to mourn, and that hit too close to home. And it was his fault for letting her get involved.

“If she went to that meeting, she knew the possibilities. Surely you don’t become a general in the turian without learning to weigh options carefully.”

While that was a good point, he couldn’t shake his guilt. Even if she had chosen what she did because she’d done her calculations, she still wouldn’t have done it if he’d never asked her about Caitus back on Taetrus. Arison had gotten him involved, but that was okay. She had needed the help and had been alone. He hadn’t needed Ternian’s help. He just had wanted an ally. And now she was dead for it.

“Look, if I had left her alone, she wouldn’t be dead. And we shouldn’t even be worrying about that right now, because I have no idea what Caitus is going to do next. He had to have known Arison was here, so he probably knows I’m here, too.”

“He can’t have known…” Marina murmured, more to herself than him. She shook her head, like she was going through the ways he could have learned Commander Shepard was alive and ruling them out one by one.

“Well, he has to. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Except it doesn’t, Garrus,” she interrupted. “Why not have the raiders kill her, then? Why not make her the main target, because her word against his would be far more damning than just a child’s testimony. Why break into Havenwood to tie up only two loose ends out of three? It doesn’t make sense. There is no way he knew.”

“Even if he didn’t know she was here, Ternian said I was easy to find. He knows I’m here.”

And if Caitus were to show up, what would he even do? Storm it with more hired mercenaries? The good news was that the dock functioned as a funnel into the atrium. With good cover in the atrium, he could hold off almost any number of run-of-the-mill hired guns. The bigger artillery would be a problem. Caitus had commandeered a team to kill those slavers years ago. If he could come up with a plausible enough excuse, would he storm Havenwood to finally, once and for all, and tie up all loose ends that might exist, even if he didn’t know Arison was still alive?

Garrus had the horrible feeling that Caitus absolutely would.

“Should we tell Arison?”

“Yes,” Marina said without a second’s hesitation.

“What if he doesn’t come, and we’ve just—”

“And what if he does come, and she hasn’t prepared for that eventuality?”

She would do one of two things, Garrus knew for a fact. She would either freeze and have a crippling panic attack, which Caitus would at least find convenient if not something far worse. Or she would lose control in the other direction. She would cool over the way he’d seen only a few times before and demonstrate why people really respected, if not feared, what Commander Shepard was capable of. It would be messy, and it would exactly what they would need, maybe exactly what she would need, but she didn’t deserve that panic she would feel either way.

“She’s sleeping right now. The blue capped pills.”

“Another panic attack?”

“She was having a flashback to Dr. Nwosu’s death.”

“Hmm, that’s new. The specific flashback. How long ago?”

“An hour ago?” Garrus guessed.

“Could Caitus muster up enough people to seriously damage the station in the next twenty-four hours?” Marina asked, and she looked surprisingly composed for someone asking so many questions so fast.

That threw Garrus for a second, because he had to do the mental math. It had taken him how long to get from Taetrus to Havenwood? Probably six or seven hours. The ship could have gone faster, and there were faster ships, but the more pressing question was if he thought Caitus could come up with some good enough lie to get soldiers to attack a medical facility subsidized by three different galactic governments, all of which the Hierarchy was at least theoretically allied with.

He couldn’t. There was no way anyone in the military would okay that.

So if Caitus wanted to storm Havenwood, he would need more hired guns. That wasn’t impossible but getting them all together would take time and money. And Arison had traced the payment to the mercenaries she had killed from an account of his, probably the same one he would use to pay more mercenaries, if he needed to.

Arison had been handling all of that aspect of the search, though. There were twenty or so datapads strewn about her room, but it wouldn’t take him that long to sort through them. She was always organized, the way she treated Marina’s files being the exception that proved the rule, so he could find the banking information quickly.

“No, but if he’s paying for it, his account will show it,” Garrus explained quickly, so Marina would understand his mad dash back to the eastern wing.

“The datapads,” Marina said, launching herself toward the door as her eyes lit with understanding.

The following rush to Shepard’s room was impressive, at least for Marina, who definitely wasn’t someone in the prime of her life or someone who worked out often, but she managed to keep pace with Garrus well. Then again, he hadn’t exactly been exercising, and he wasn’t young anymore, either.

Arison was still asleep when they rushed in, and from how loud Marina was being as she tried to gather as many of the datapads as possible, it wasn’t likely that Arison really could wake up after that medication.

“Start here,” she ordered, handing him a stack of the pads.

Garrus turned on the first one, and its storage was fill with archived patient files, all in the same format, so he tossed that aside a bit more cavalierly than he normally would have. The next few were the same. It wasn’t until Marina handed him the next batch that he found what they were looking for.

There was an account number for a volus-run banking group, and the sum he had paid the mercenaries to murder a child. It was a lot of money, but Garrus was revolted that someone could put a credit-value on the life of a kid. And Arison had made a back entrance into the bank’s software, where she could monitor the account.

It hadn’t changed in the last twenty-four hours, except for a few nominal charges, probably for every-day purchases. Nothing that could buy him a small army, at least.

Marina, who had been looking over Garrus’ shoulder the moment he was intently working, let out a sigh of relief and ran her hands down her face slowly.

Garrus set the datapad down.

Spirits bless, Caitus hadn’t made a move toward Havenwood yet. It didn’t make sense to, but at least there was some assurance that Caitus wasn’t taking a risky bet in the hopes that he could finally, once and for all, silence the people who knew the truth.

Marina made a strange symbol with her right hand, touching her head, stomach, and then shoulders, and then paused when she saw Garrus’ confusion and murmured, almost embarrassedly,

“I have not done that in a long time.”

“What? Go for a run?” Garrus teased, because he was bordering on hysterics. Ternian was dead, and he had been preparing for an all-out battle in an old medical facility with only three other people who could use firearms with any sort of skill. And Arison had tremors, and he hadn’t fired his gun in years. And the adrenaline was still rushing through his system.

“You turians think you’re so good with your… not being persistence hunters,” she muttered, now waving the same hand at him dismissively. “Give me a five-mile race, and I’ll kick your ass.”

And Garrus couldn’t help but give a laugh which, really, sounded more like he was being punched in the stomach.

“We have at least twenty-four hours,” he managed.

At least twenty-four hours to prepare the facility. And more importantly, prepare Arison.  
  
  
The author's note is going here, because it involves a photo:  
Please enjoy the shitty meme I made in 10 seconds on powerpoint.


	30. Strategic Geography

Garrus had been half-way to nodding off when his omnitool pinged with an alert, which had him slowly forcing his eyes open again. After the long talk he’d had with Marina about how to broach the topic of seeing Caitus again to Arison, he had more or less just collapsed on the chair in Arison’s room and let himself drift off. It had been a long day, and it was only an hour or so into the night cycle.

The alert made sure that he had absolutely nothing but adrenaline rushing through his body for the second time in twenty-four hours, though.

It was a message from Sarisa, which just said:

_atrium_

The chokepoint.

But Caitus hadn’t transferred money.

Unless he’d managed to get some part of the military to back an objectively insane mission.

Garrus bolted out of the chair, and one of his calf spurs caught the leg, knocking it over.

Arison bolted up in her bed, once again looking panicked, and this time, Garrus couldn’t just give her platitudes.

“What is it?” she demanded once she saw the look on his face, one that he was pretty desperately trying to hide. She was already trying to swing her legs off of the bed, and from the looks of it, adrenaline was pumping through her veins, too. But she couldn’t fight. She didn’t even have a gun, as far as he had seen. He wasn’t sure where she’d gotten the gun that she’d used to kill the raiders, and now wasn’t the time to find out.

“Just stay here,” he half-ordered, half-begged.

“What is it?” she reiterated, but there wasn’t time for this, there really wasn’t. So Garrus just bolted to the door and locked it behind him. She could unlock it if she wanted, but if she listened to him for once in her damned stubborn life, she would be at least relatively safe.

He could only hope she didn’t do anything wildly stupid as he ran to the elevator and unholstered the pistol he’d been carrying uselessly this whole time. Even if it was the same as every other time he'd made his way to the atrium, this time the halls all seemed to be four times longer, and Garrus found himself forced to calm down. He needed to keep his cool. He wasn’t going to be any use to anyone if he was nervous.

Havenwood had a security team. He would run them like any squad he’d ever had in his life. He had been the best shot in the turian military. He had helped save the entire galaxy. As long as there weren’t any rockets they could launch at his face, he could hold a single damn chokepoint. He wasn’t some rookie; he was a veteran damn it.

By the time the door opened to the first floor, all sense of panic was gone. Even if he was going to have to kill turians, he was going to make sure there weren’t any more civilian casualties involved in any of this. Caitus had done enough to hurt innocents, and it would stop here, or Garrus was going to die trying.

And Caitus and anyone stupid enough to follow his lead hadn’t trained beside Commander Shepard for years, so the likelihood of them taking him down wasn’t great.

The facility still wasn’t in lockdown, though, he noticed as he ran full-tilt down the first level of the eastern wing. Sirens and blast doors should have been closing, but instead, all he heard was a general commotion coming from the atrium. It didn’t occur to him until he’d ground to a halt by the secretary’s desk that he hadn’t even heard gunshots.

He was frozen in place. Because while he’d been expecting to come face to face with some zealots from the turian military who were going to force him to commit what would amount to treason more or less, he was not expecting to see said turian zealots anxiously waiting around a single figure who was being placed onto a hospital bed by some of Havenwood’s medical staff.

Before Garrus could even pose a question, and he had a lot of them, Sarisa, who was standing near the bed, jerked her thumb back towards the small collective of soldiers.

“What the fuck?” she demanded.

Garrus was about to give her a shrug to communicate that he was just as lost as anyone else here, until he heard a familiar voice call out from the stretcher,

“If I die here, Vakarian, you’re telling Pallas,” Ternian snarled over the racket of the random medical team around her. It looked like anyone nearby had rushed to help, and Garrus recognized at least one of the doctors as someone who only worked research as far as he could help it.

And then things started to make sense. Sort of.

Garrus eased his way to the hospital bed, which was already being dragged into the western wing, to see Ternian gasping for air, blood dripping down either side of her mandibles. There was also blue etching down her face, from her eyes, dragging down across her orange clan markings.

It didn’t look good, that was all Garrus could think. He’d only ever worked with triage, and this is something he would have passed straight up the line to someone who knew what they were doing.

“Poison,” Ternian explained.

He could see now that her teeth were blue-tinted as well. How much turian blood did this station have to spare? If she was going to live, it needed to be a lot.

“Please stop talking,” a nurse begged from Ternian’s side. The woman was trying to get readings from something connected to her omnitool, and what Garrus could see from the angle he was at wasn’t good at all.

But Ternian wasn’t dead. Not yet, not like he had feared. And she was a fighter, and everyone in Havenwood hated losing patients. There really weren’t many places that could do better by her, even on Palaven.

There were a lot of things being tossed around that he didn’t hear all of. Someone was already trying to draw her blood while they were half-running the bed to the urgent care, and they managed to get the draw on the first stick, which Garrus really didn’t have the time to be impressed with at the moment. He couldn’t catch all of it, but they were going to take her into surgery, which he thought was a bad idea considering the blood loss, but what did he know?

“Detective, please stay here,” a nurse demanded as they pushed Ternian into a sterile operating room.

Garrus froze, because he knew he couldn’t do a single helpful thing in there, but he felt responsible. And if Ternian died on an operating table, he wanted to be there with her. He owed her that much, didn’t he?

“Fuck the bastard up for me, Vakarian!” Ternian ordered from somewhere in the room, an order clearly. And even if he hadn’t been sure where he fell in the line of command when he first met her, she had earned his subordination.

He stopped in the door frame, watching numbly as salarians and humans and asari, all from completely different medical disciplines, were frantically working together to save the life of some turian they had never even heard of or met.

“Yes, General,” he said stiffly as a salarian tech began to encourage him back out into the hallway.

And then the door shut, and he was staring at metal, knowing that anything that happened at this point was beyond his ability to help.

Except.

Except for the fact that there was a group of soldiers loyal to Ternian waiting in the atrium. Caitus had made a mistake. He hadn’t made Ternian disappear, or at least he had tried and failed. There was a possibility that she would live. And if she didn’t, there were witnesses.

It was as good a start as anything he would get.

They needed to prepare a defense of the station, and now he had the manpower to do it, to really set up something fool proof, and as much as Garrus had been glad to have the security force on the station, these were trained soldiers. Maybe things wouldn’t end horrifically. Not if he could set this up right.

He slowed his pace as he returned to the atrium.

It was silent when he got there, with the soldiers, all six of them, standing uncomfortably in parade rest in front of the door from the docking area. The highest ranking of them was a colonel, and Garrus was positive that he at least outranked her. The soldiers seemed to think so as well, as they all directed their attention to him.

“I need a debriefing,” he ordered.

The colonel spoke up, stepping forward and coming to stand before him and snapping to a salute.

“Your name, Colonel?”

“Phoros, sir.”

“Are there any more soldiers aboard your ship, Phoros?”

“No, sir.”

“So what happened?”

“General Ternian started having a medical emergency. We were ordered to get her off planet for medical treatment, since Vallum's hospital still isn’t rebuilt. We were to go to Palaven, but the general ordered us here.”

Garrus would have laughed in just about any other situation. She’d said he wasn’t hard to find, and he’d thought it was just a general warning, not that she’d actually figured out exactly where he was. But she’d turned down turian-specialized care in order to avoid anyone that Caitus might have influence over. It was as smart as it was risky, but calculating risks to her advantage was how Ternian had managed to defend Palaven against the Reapers.

“Do you know what caused her medical emergency?” Garrus asked, doing his best to keep his thoughts to himself, at least the ones about Caitus.

“She was in a committee meeting when it began, sir.”

“Does she have a history of bleeding from her eyes, Colonel?”

“No, sir.”

Phoros was well-trained. She kept her tone even, and her subvocals betrayed nothing other than the required deference to someone of higher rank. There was a human card game Garrus had played once or twice. He’d been alright at it all things considered, even if Thane had won every time. A poker face was what the humans called it, when you couldn’t read a person. And if Phoros ever played the game, she probably could have rivaled Thane.

“What happened in the meeting? I heard they could bore a person to death, but that seemed like an exaggeration at the time,” he pressed.

Phoros opened her mouth to say something, but her eyes darted to just over Garrus’ shoulder, and, for just a split second, her poker face dropped. She was… almost confused, which definitely didn’t make sense, until he looked back and saw Arison, her hair down of course, leaning against the eastern wing’s doorway to the atrium. Shepard was watching intently, hopefully connecting two and two to know that it was a false alarm of sorts that had woken her up.

Garrus dropped his subvocals and made a short, sharp noise, the turian equivalent of clearing his throat, and Phoros returned her attention to him instantly. She didn’t look like she’d really recognized who stood in the doorway, which was good, really, because this plan didn’t need any more complications to it. He wasn’t even sure he could trust Phoros with Ternian’s health, because she clearly knew something she wasn’t saying, but she hadn’t sabotaged the trip here, so she was either playing a long con, or she just wasn’t sure what Garrus was supposed to know about the situation. The first would be unfortunate, but he could cope. The second seemed like a fair assumption to make, so instead of airing on the side of caution, he decided he was going to treat her like any other ally. At least until she proved otherwise.

And he didn’t want them back on their ship, not when it was the only quick way off this station, not when it was possible that even one of them was the least bit indebted to Caitus or anyone associated with him.

“Elissa,” he addressed over his shoulder, the name sounding horrifically wrong as it came out, “could you see where we can set up the soldiers until Ternian’s stable?”

He looked back to see her nod and then make her way over to the secretary’s computer far more smoothly than he’d seen her walk in a long time. He found himself almost asking questions, but it probably was thanks to some part of that pharmacy she kept on her dresser.

She wasn’t speaking, though, he realized, probably because she wasn’t keen on giving anyone who might actually recognize her any more hints about who she was. After a moment of typing, she motioned him over.

She had a floor plan up of the apartment area of the station, and there was one set entirely unoccupied. It only had three bedrooms, but there was a couch, and they had all definitely slept on worse in basic training.

“Alright,” Garrus said, walking back over to the small group of soldiers. “First of all, until Ternian’s back up and kicking, I’m your CO. Understood?”

Every single one of them saluted and gave some variant of, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Second, no messages to anyone off this station. I don’t care if it’s your mother or the Primarch himself, you’re not sending anything out.”

He could hear Arison typing quickly behind his back, and he had the suspicion that she was already finding the frequency their omnitools communicated on. She’d gotten into his secure server, she could crack some basic military software. And he didn’t have a problem with that, it meant that he didn’t really have to trust them.

“Third, you’re free to walk about the station as long as you’re not interfering with any work. I’ll show you where you can bunk down. They’re on a human-based schedule here, so three meals a day starting at 6, 12, and 6. The dextro food isn’t half bad, either. Any questions?”

A younger soldier in the back hesitated and then asked,

“How is the general looking, sir?”

He clearly wasn’t invested in whatever act Phoros was. He was worried about Ternian, and from the way several others looked back to Garrus, this young turian wasn’t the only one.

“She’s in the best hands we could hope for,” was all Garrus could say, because it was true. And he also wanted to hope that maybe, just maybe, if this place could piece Arison back together, they could keep Ternian alive and kicking.


	31. The Surest Form of Ownership

After Garrus had set up the soldiers in the spare rooms, he found Arison at the atrium desk, now with a sniper rifle sitting across it.

“You do some reconnaissance?” he asked as he walked closer.

Arison let out a short laugh, but didn’t look up, because she was taking stock of it, and when Garrus sidled up next to her, he found himself automatically doing the same thing.

It was definitely a standard, military grade sniper rifle, which she definitely stole from the docked ship. It had a little wear and tear, but it wasn’t in bad condition, all things considered. Shepard’s rifle had been modded to hell and back, just like his own, and she’d even tinkered with the mods a fair bit. It had been expensive as hell, too, just about the only thing she would ever spend her own money on.

This wasn’t her Black Widow, but her thin hands were darting around the entirety of it to map it all. It was mesmerizing, watching how she treated the metal. He was standing so close to her that he could feel the warmth radiating off of her, too, and smell the soap she had used to wash her hair. It wasn’t what he was used to, which was whatever the Alliance stocked the Normandy with back in the day, but it still smelled nice.

This was like old times. Her attention on a gun, his attention was mostly on her.

Arison stepped back a bit to experimentally settle the gun against her shoulder a few times, tearing inches away from him, before she shrugged.

“It’ll do,” she murmured as she set it back down on the desk.

And they could talk shop, just talk about hardware and keep things easy, but that wasn’t fixing things, was it? And there were… still a lot of things that needed fixing. So Garrus asked, “Are you okay? I’m sorry about waking you up like that.”

Arison ran one of her index fingers down the barrel of the gun, probably as a way to keep herself focused on something real before she answered him. And she didn’t look at him when she said it either.

“Don’t leave me behind like that again.”

She tried so hard not to let anyone know how she felt, but her voice was raw with something bordering on anger. And the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. She had never liked being looked down on, and him outpacing her and locking her room, even if she could get out, probably didn’t come across well.

But before he could apologize, she looked up over her shoulder at him.

“You handled them well.”

She meant it. She meant it, and instantly, Garrus was second-guessing everything he had said to the small squad. The situation had driven him to stop thinking, to work on instinct, and he had taken control of it without even considering that he didn’t really know what he was doing. He probably looked like an idiot and—

“Hey, Garrus,” she ordered.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said in one quick go. It was an admission that he would have made to just about anyone, but it felt cathartic to say it to her.

Had he known what he was doing just about ever? Fuck no. But at least the years with her had given him someone to follow, to learn from. Her lead had given him a way to feel confident about what he was capable of. And that conversation he had accidentally overheard, between Adrien and Arison. They both thought he had potential, but all he ever felt like he did was take potential and drive it straight into the ground.

“You did well,” she reiterated now, more sternly. And her ice blue eyes were looking up at him, just waiting for him to disagree, which she knew full well he couldn’t do. “You need to give yourself more credit,” she added as she gathered the rifle into her arms.

“Ternian might die,” he tried to argue, because if she did, then he was a failure again. That was all it took, one thing these doctors and nurses and techs couldn’t do, and he had ruined another plan and gotten another person killed.

“She knew what she was getting into,” Arison said like it was fact, even though it couldn’t have been anything more than a guess.

She then cast a sideways glance in his direction. It looked downright conspiratorial.

“You think we can mod this before she pulls through?”

Before. So she really thought the Havenwood staff could do the impossible. And as much as he wanted to doubt it, to expect the worst and punish himself for it, he found himself unable to, not with how confident Shepard was about this. When had she ever been wrong about something she had assured him was true? Never, that he could think of.

“You’re good, but you’re no quarian,” Garrus teased.

“Did Marina give you a room with a horizontal surface?” she asked as she leaned her back against the desk, her rifle in hand, muzzle down toward the floor. And Garrus hadn’t realized that this was flirting until he noticed the almost playful look in her eyes.

“I—” he started but found the rest of the sentence running away from him faster than he could follow.

He could feel how warm her body was, just standing near her. At the angle he was looking at her, he could almost see where her neck met her shoulder, and he hadn’t had sex in… years.

There was no one around either. The secretary was probably trying to sort out whatever had happened with someone who was more in charge than either Arison or Garrus.

And she was offering.

But Ternian had been bleeding out of her damn eyes, and Arison didn’t know that there was still the distinct possibility that Caitus was coming to Havenwood.

But…

“You want to watch and learn, Vakarian?” she asked as she dragged one hand down her gun slowly, intentionally. “This is an invitation,”

She tilted her head to the side, showing more of her neck, and Garrus knew that even with his mind in a million different places, his subvocals when he responded were downright filthy, because the last time he’d had sex was the Normandy, with Arison, one last desperate fuck before the world ended.

“You up to it?” he asked, trying to be more confident than he was.

“Come here,” Arison offered, beckoning a finger down toward her.

And he leaned down without thinking, without even a second’s hesitation. And what she said had his pulse racing and his stomach tightening. She snaked her free hand up from his neck to his fringe, her short nails beginning to rake down where it was most sensitive when she murmured,

“My fingers don’t compare, Garrus. But if you’re up for it, I am.”

There was a lot going on, between worrying about the general and the squad of turians she arrived with and Caitus and Arison’s general health, but it all stopped as she dug her fingers into his skin, stopping time completely. He was glad there were no other turians around, because her tone and her touched bordered on pornographic.

“You’re—”

He wanted to say that he was sick. That she was fragile.

But she wasn’t, not really. And he could already see exactly how her heartrate increased and how her breathing sped up. She wanted this, too. It wasn’t him forcing himself on her, and she’d already said she wanted to have what they had before, hadn’t she?

“I’m what?” she demanded as she pulled away quickly, a sharp look in her gaze.

She hated feeling weak. She hated being treated like she couldn’t handle things, and, clearly, she could handle everything and then some.

“You’re on,” he dared, trying to replicate a human smirk as well as any turian could, covering his tracks.

And her hesitance and coldness faded instantly, almost more quickly than should have been possible, as she grabbed Garrus by the cloth on his chest and bringing him into a vicious kiss.

Even with blunted teeth, as she bit into his mouth plate, he could feel his body responding out of habit and instinct, and Spirits, she knew all of his weaknesses by now, didn’t she? Kissing had seemed weird at first, a bit wet and odd, but now, she had ruined him for turians. For everyone else. And he had needed her for years.

“Are there cameras in your room?” she asked after she broke the kiss and began to bite down his neck.

“Hm?” he managed to ask despite the fact that his brain was almost entirely shut down.

“I’m not interested in an audience,” she said, jerking a thumb up to the nearest surveillance camera.

And while that sobered him for a split second, all it really did after that was help him realize that, no, he wasn’t dreaming, and he wouldn’t wake up hating his life more than ever.

He couldn’t help the chuckle that left his mouth, but he did definitely enjoy the way Arison let out a shuddering breath when he brought his hands into her hair and then gently pulled before offering, “Then follow me.”

And as he walked to the room he was borrowing, Arison behind him keeping pace with a speed he would have thought was too fast for her until now, the taste of her still in his mouth, he refused to let himself worry about this. She wanted this, he could tell just from the way her body was responding to him. She had initiated this. Thinking too much about it was going to ruin everything, and he had loved her and missed her… And once he reached the door to the common room, it was all he could do keep his hands to himself until they were safely in his bedroom.

The moment he shut the door behind them, Arison was using her skilled, skilled, tiny fingers to undo the clasps on his outfit while her other hand dragged down from his fringe again, setting his every nerve on fire.

His own hands were busy, he realized belatedly, as he less than cautiously tossed her new, mostly-stolen rifle away and then set to work on the finicky buttons on her thick shirt. They were meant for human hands, that much was evident from how long it took him to even get the shirt unbuttoned enough to see her bra, and she’d already got him out of nearly everything he was wearing.

“Having trouble?” she asked after kissing her way down his neck. There were going to be bruises there tomorrow, he was sure, blue bruises in the shape of her mouth, and that idea only made it even harder for him to focus on the third, small, white button.

“Then why don’t you take it off?” he purred.

Arison grabbed his gloved hands into hers and pushed them back to his chest before using just one hand to pop open button after button.

He hadn’t been lying when he said he wasn’t really interested in humans, but he had been interested in her. It had taking some getting used to, some positive conditioning, but by the end, he understood why human men found lingerie at least intriguing. Arison would never wear it, he was sure, but he definitely enjoyed the idea of carefully easing her out of whatever she wore. 

Time hadn’t changed much, really, he thought as she shrugged off her shirt and let it fall to the floor and then dropped her pants in one quick movement. She still wore grey under everything. She still had a bra which compressed more than accentuated.

She still drove him mad.

He didn’t need a refresher on how to pull her bra over her head, and he certainly didn’t need a refresher on how to lift her up against the wall and very carefully latch his teeth onto her nipples as his tongue played with them.

And she was so responsive, too, to the point that it was almost distracting. He could feel absolutely everything she was doing, from squirming to panting to writhing, but once he set her down on the dresser, he noticed that her legs were shaking, and not in a particularly good way.

He was planning on pulling away, quickly, but Arison’s hands were already trying to get the rest of his clothes off with her mouth now latching on his shoulder.

“Your legs…” he panted out.

“It’s just the medicine. If you fuck me here, they won’t be a problem,” she bit out, definitely frustrated at herself, as she hooked a thumb into her underwear and leaned into him so she could pull them off.

“I like your legs,” Garrus commented as he brought a still-gloved hand down her stomach. He could feel her muscles clenching beneath him, because she hadn’t been touched in so long, because she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and he could smell it now, how much she needed him.

“When they work, you can say that again. In the meantime,” she growled, “just get inside me.”

She would always be Commander Shepard, even if she pretended she wasn’t, but that didn’t mean he always needed to take her orders. Especially since he could tell exactly how tense she still was. He wasn’t about to hurt her, not when he wanted to hear her panting out his name in a room he could barely call his own.

He was nearly out of his plates. Given a second, he could probably give her exactly what she was demanding, but he had a better idea.

Garrus slid onto his knees, leaning his head up at an angle that wasn’t exactly great for him, and gave an absolutely wicked smile, even if she didn’t know what it was. She probably knew what it was. Because her pupils were mostly dilated, and she was sneaking a hand down to his fringe.

He liked to think he was good at oral sex, especially with Arison, since humans seemed to love tongues so much, especially since he could have her coming in minutes flat. The closest Commander Shepard had ever come to begging for anything, really begging, was when she had brought her legs around his head and repeated his name in a frenzy.

It had hurt him to think about that until now, but as he used one hand to spread her open and the other to hold her hand against his head, there was literally nothing he wanted more.

But she was impatient, and desperate, and this was something he hadn’t considered in years. And this arousal? It wasn’t something he’d felt in years either.

“Patience,” he murmured just before bringing the tip of his tongue to dance against her clit.

Her response was immediate. Her legs started to quake harder, and she held onto the back of his head like her life relied on it. And from there, it was all he could do not to drop a hand down between his legs as she writhed against his mouth plates. She tasted the same after all these years, and if he’d been in a place to feel anything other than empty before this, he would have been able to have had wet dreams from that alone. The first time he had eaten her out, it had tasted strange, but not unpleasant. Now, he knew it would be a struggle just to stop.

Arison was feeling something other than pain for once, and she was bucking into him, which was all Garrus could have ever hoped for, but it wasn’t enough.

He paused, and the moment he did, and raised his gaze to her, he could see the desperation in her eyes.

“What?” she demanded, clearly expecting a game. Which was fair, considering how their relationship had been once.

“Gloves or no?” Garrus asked as he pulled a finger down from where his tongue had been.

She had been expecting a game, not him asking for instruction, and, Spirits, this got an even better response from her than he could have imagined.

“Put your damn fingers inside of me, or you’ll—”

But as she was talking, Garrus had eased off the glove, and before she could finish, he pressed a finger into her and flicked at her clit once again with his tongue.

Arison threw her head back against the wall, with her skull making an audible cracking noise as her hips lifted further off of the dresser, trying to push him further into her.

He hadn’t filed his talons down in a while, but Arison clearly didn’t care, because she was panting and from the way her body was arching, he could tell she was close as he added a second finger.

The whole world was Shepard.

She was all he could smell, all he could taste, all he could feel. Her slick was sliding down his fingers to his palm and wrist. Her walls were sporadically tightening around his fingers, and when he slid his hand, so it was facing upwards and curled his fingers, Arison’s second hand, which hand been bracing her on the dresser, flew to his fringe as she gasped out,

“Garrus!”

And when he returned to thrusting into her at that angle, he could feel her orgasm before he could taste it.

She always did the same thing every time she came. Every muscle in her legs tightened, she arched her back, and her fingers curled in on themselves. This time, her legs were shaking violently on either side of his head, and he didn’t stop licking and fucking her with his fingers until she began to sag backwards against the wall, desperately trying to get her breath back.

“Good?” he asked, and the moment her heavily lidded gaze caught on his own, he darted his tongue out once more, this time to just barely slide over her, licking up any mess she had made.

“Garrus Vakarian. I said I wanted you in me. And have you done that?” she demanded. But she didn’t sound quite as imperious as she wanted. But it was enough to do the trick.

He was hard, leaking, and she was relaxed and wet enough for him now. There was nothing he wanted more, as he got to his feet, than to just sink into her.

“Is that an order, Commander?” he teased on reflex.

Before he could panic that this was the wrong address, Arison was leaning forward and trying to haul him up by his crest, still desperate, just not as much as she had been before.

“That is an order, soldier,” she snarled, and that was all Garrus needed to entirely lose control. He could argue all he wanted but hearing her like that was enough to drive a man insane, so he pulled her closer again and didn’t even tease her before gently pressing himself against her entrance.

She had been relaxed before, but she was already tightening again, and this time it wasn’t because she was close to the edge. The pain was probably edging its way back in.

“You’re—”

“Get. Inside.”

All complaints were gone, because she was placing her hands on where the dresser met the wall and shoving herself down onto him until he was entirely sheathed in her.

“Shepard,” he gasped out, “I’m trying—”

“You’re treating me like I’m fragile. I’m not.”

And she grabbed him by the neck and stared directly in his eyes. There was nothing there but arousal and intensity, nothing behind those ice blue eyes that he could reject.

And if she was upset, she was only going to get tighter and less wet, and the last time things had gotten like that, she’d been frustrated when he insisted they stop. And stopping now would only end with her angry at him.

So he chose one of his few options and slid out a couple of inches just to slam back into her.

“Like that?” he murmured next to her ear.

“Fuck yes,” she demanded.

She was beautiful like this, her eyes half-open and her neck bared as he held her waist tightly. And after that demand, he didn’t bother with finesse anymore. And from the way she responded, with one hand flying to her clit and the other holding her forward from the wall, she didn’t care about finesse.

He had missed her.

He had missed every inch of her skin and every bit of her personality, and he loved her. He had gone years without her, and he didn’t want to spend even another day apart from her, and there was just Shepard. Just Shepard warm and panting and gasping, wet and perfectly tight. He could barely even register the fact that the dresser was thudding against the wall on particularly strong thrusts, because his mouth was locked on hers, his tongue diving into her mouth.

It didn’t take long for her to start tensing back up, either. 

“Missed me that much?” he panted after leaning his weight back a bit to change his angle, in a way which had Arison outright gasping for air.

“Just your dick,” she tried to bite out breathlessly.

“Hmm. Not my tongue?”

He could taste the sweat on her skin as he moved his mouth down her neck, closing his mouth around her flesh but not hard enough to break skin. She liked him to wait for that, to wait until she was just about to come, and then she would arch into him and swear and gasp. And there was nothing he wanted more than to feel her orgasm wring his own out of him.

She opened her mouth to say something else witty, but her voice cracked before she even finished the first word, and that the cue.

On instinct alone, he brought his teeth into her skin, breaking it so easily. As he sunk them further into her, further into the muscle, so blood began to ooze out of his mouth and down her collarbone and arm, she came once more, and just like he had remembered all those years ago, he followed her instantly, and the world came crashing down until there was nothing in his mind besides pleasure and the iron taste of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Around four thousand words of smut. You’re welcome, I have no idea how this happened. (Actually, I do know. I was drunk and lonely in quarantine.)


	32. A Contained and Prescribed Burn

The first thing he noticed as the world slowly faded back was the blood.

It was sliding down this throat, running down his mouth, the only thing he could even smell, and as he tried to slowly release his teeth from her neck, the movement had her skin making a sickening sucking noise.

The seconds moved by at a crawl, and not just because of the post-orgasm haze. No, it was because of the million thoughts trying to scream at him that he had fucked up.

He was hyperaware of every place where their bodies touched, her thighs around his waist, her hand sliding down his neck. And where his mouthplates were millimeter by millimeter leaving her neck. Her legs were slack, her hand was moving slowly downward, but no part of her was tense, even as he slowly slid himself out of her.

She wasn’t pushing him away. She wasn’t yelling.

He was still leaning over her shoulder, because he couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes, so he was just staring at the wounds his teeth had made. If they applied medigel quickly, there wouldn’t even be a mark after an hour or so, like they’d tested back on the Normandy years back.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, watching as rivulets of blood began to roll further down her back, onto the dresser.

And then she pushed him away, like he had been expecting. Like he had feared. Sex was one thing, wasn’t it? When that was what she wanted? They’d both wanted it… But…

As Arison grabbed the front of his carapace, he couldn’t help but think about the fact that the reason pain turned her on so much was because her earliest experiences with sex had been violent. It was one thing to hear her say it was just “a specific set of responses” and another thing to know that Caitus had probably bitten her to hell and back while raping her, and he was re-enacting it all but the violence.

“For what?” she asked tensely, holding him in place with her one, strong hand. He still couldn’t look at her, not when she was actively losing blood. Some of it was down dripping down her breast, over a nipple, like some fucked up parody of what his tongue had done not long ago.

“For what?” she reiterated.

And it was her panicked tone that had him finally able to look up. For once, she was an open book, with confusion and sadness and fear in every feature.

She was scared he was going to what? End whatever relationship they had been working on immediately after some admittedly desperate and quick sex? It hadn’t been that bad, right? He’d been a little focused on himself by the end, but she’d come twice. Right?

“You weren’t faking, were you?”

“What?”

“It was good, right?”

“Was it bad for you?”

“Spirits, no!”

“So, what are you sorry for?”

And now that Garrus looked further down her body, he considered that he had a good bit to be sorry for actually. His talons had left red welts on her skin, even if he hadn’t punctured anywhere other than her neck. His come was pooling on the dresser between her legs, and he probably definitely should have used protection. And then of course there was the blood was nearly down to her hips.

“It was good, right?” Garrus asked again, this time to reassure himself.

“Best sex I’ve had in half a decade, Garrus,” she teased.

“You’re really bleeding,” he murmured.

He wanted to cover up the bite with his hands or try to staunch the bleeding, but he definitely didn’t want to touch her and risk hurting her even more. And leaving to find medigel or something would only read badly to her, so he just stood between her knees, one hand hovering over her injured shoulder.

“I told you, I’ve just got a specific set of responses—”

“You’re really bleeding, Arison—”

“It’s not like you’re one of them—”

“You didn’t ask for—”

“Garrus—”

“You didn’t ask for me to bite you, and I didn’t ask—”

“Garrus. Stop.”

Her order slowed time from the dizzying speed it had barreled into all of a sudden. He hadn’t even realized how desperate he sounded until her commanded echoed in his ears, so calm next to his panic, a complete reversal from a few moments ago.

“Garrus, you didn’t do anything I didn’t want. Okay?”

Her tone was tense, but… yeah, he believed it, even if some part of himself still felt sick as he tried to swallow the taste of iron out of his mouth.

“Yeah. Okay,” he agreed.

“If we’re gonna talk about this, can I at least clean myself up? Or move somewhere more comfortable?”

Before she had even finished her first question, Garrus had stepped back quickly and began looking around for something to use for either of the two fluids. He glanced around the sparse room, and the first thing that caught his eye in the room was his gun case. He had cleaning cloths in there. There was bound to be at least one in there that hadn’t been used yet.

Sure enough, there was one left from the pack that he hadn’t used. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to be rubbing against skin, but it was better than any other option, really. And when he turned around, Arison had her hands outstretched to catch it, still sitting on the dresser.

How could she be so… calm about it? She could feel pain, and the bite had to at least sting. And she’d said “turians” to correct him before. How could she not be… triggered after all this? Just waiting for her to say anything was nerve-wracking enough.

Even if she was just waiting for him to toss it, Garrus couldn’t help but walk it over. And then press it into a waiting hand, because even if she was going to act like none of this bothered her, that just couldn’t be true. She had been so scared earlier that he was going to call everything off for no reason, so this had to be an act.

So she needed him to be paying attention, even if he was still trying to keep his guilt from cannibalizing everything.

“It’s really not that bad,” she commented once she’d cleaned between her legs and found him still staring at where her shoulder met her neck. It was slowing a bit at least, which was a small mercy, really, so he didn’t have to keep watching his mistake run down her body.

“I shouldn’t have…”

“Help me off of here, will you?” she asked, before he could say anything more.

She was bracing her arms on the edge, so when he finally convinced himself that it was okay to touch her hips, where the reddened scratches were fading at least a bit, she was almost steady when her feet touched the floor.

Spirits, she was so fragile.

She didn’t want to be. She didn’t want to think she was, and she didn’t want him to think she was, but she was clearly wiped out from the way her legs began to quiver once she put weight back on them, and there really wasn’t that much weight to be putting on them, was there? He hadn’t been paying attention to it earlier, but he could count her ribs. Just barely, but he could.

Was it a side-effect of the medication? She had access to all the food she could eat, so why in the world did she look like a damn skeleton?

“Shit,” Arison hissed after trying to move one foot forward into a step, and that was all it took for Garrus to ease her the two feet it took to get to the bed. It was going to get blood on the blankets, probably, and he didn’t know where the laundry was, and he definitely didn’t want to answer any questions about why it was there…

“You okay?” he asked, getting desperate again. Because they shouldn’t have done that. Not the way they did, not the time they did. Not with Ternian maybe dead and not with Caitus still out there. Not when they hadn’t _really_ talked about all this.

“Are you?” she returned, staring up at him from the bed with that intuitive look which meant she knew exactly how nervous and guilty he was.

“We should have talked about it before… that.”

“I’m sure that would have been riveting and all, Garrus, but I think we did fine enough without it.”

“I don’t want to act like I don’t know,” he started, because he wanted to explain to her why he was serious. She seemed to think this was something to joke about, and maybe she was doing it to protect herself… Okay, she was definitely doing it to protect herself, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need to talk about it. And maybe years ago, he would have just let it go, saying that Shepard knew best. Maybe she still did, but he needed this. He needed her to understand what he was thinking.

“You really want to talk about this,” she said, taken aback. “You really want this?”

“Listen… I don’t know every detail of what happened to you, and I don’t… I don’t think I’d be able to. But we need to talk about at least some part of this before we have sex again. If you don’t want to do that now, that’s fine. But I don’t want to hurt you. More.”

He trailed off, mostly because there was no change in Shepard's expression as she looked up at him.

Then, she tilted her head toward the bed, and Garrus slid to sit next to her as quickly as he could, because of course she wouldn’t want to be having this conversation while straining to look up at him.

“Before, what exactly were you apologizing for?”

He didn’t have a quick answer, though, he realized, as he watched her begin to use the other end of the cloth to dab up some of the streaks of blood across her torso.

What in specific had he even been thinking about? It wasn’t just the fact that he’d broken her skin. That was the easy answer. No, that was just part of it.

Fuck.

It seemed like Shepard knew the answer, and now that Garrus had it, he hated it.

“For being like them.”

She didn’t look up from where she was still staining the cloth a deep red when she asked, “Garrus, what do you think your defining trait is, as a person?”

It hadn’t taken her more than two questions to piledrive passed literally anything he was comfortable talking with and make him feel like she was peeling him open and staring at the mess that was inside him. She’d been good at this, getting other people to open up so she could help them, and she’d done it with him before once or twice, but that didn’t mean it felt good.

Because the answer he was going to give wasn’t great. His defining trait? Probably his ability to fuck up every good thing he ever had. But that wasn’t the answer she was demanding of him.

“Definitely my rugged scars,” he offered as teasingly as he could.

Arison stopped blotting and gave him a reprimanding look out of the side of her eye.

“They’re a nice touch. Now do you want to try again, or do you want me to answer?”

Now there was the question of the century. Because if he said something, he could pretend he was lying. He could say that he was just being full of himself. But then he would have to think about the question, really give her an answer. Or he could refuse to even think about it and let her give an answer. But Commander Shepard wasn’t wrong about people. When it had come down to the wire time and time again, she had understood everyone standing at her side. The answer she would give would be the right one, and then he’d have to hear it and pretend it wasn’t true.

Because, Spirits, he really hated himself didn’t he?

Everyone talked about him like he had potential. Or worse, like he’d done literally anything worth acclaim, and every time he heard it, he felt more and more like he was just lying his way deeper and deeper into this mess. What had he really done that was worth being proud of? C-Sec hadn’t wanted him. He’d failed as a vigilante. He’d let Shepard die once and then go up to the Catalyst alone where she burned. He’d brought nothing to the table as Adrien’s advisor…

“I…” he tried, but failed.

It wasn’t her question, but what was something he was proud of about himself? Was there anything, even, at this point?

“I’m a good shot.”

That was the first actual, positive thing he could grit out. He was. That wasn’t just something other people thought about him. He had the stats to back that up, and a couple of medals in his shitty apartment to boast about, too, if he wanted. He was good at hand-to-hand, too. Good at military things, a couple, then.

She didn’t stop him. She just nodded and held the entirety of the cloth against the bite mark.

“Good enough that you outshot me.”

“You threw that, and I know it.”

“Good enough that you were considered for Spectre training.”

“What?” he asked slowly. He hadn’t known she’d known about that. He’d tried his damnest to forget about it. That had been the first chapter in the entire book of failures that was his entire damn life. How long had she known?

“I did my research on everyone I brought on the Normandy. I wasn’t sure how well you would be willing to take orders from someone the Council was considering for Spectre status, since you hadn’t enrolled in the training, even when recruited.”

“Shepard, I—”

He didn’t want to talk about this, he really didn’t. This was supposed to be a conversation about how he and Shepard were supposed to not hurt each other.

“You wanted to be Spectre, didn’t you?”

“Shepard, this isn’t—”

“You weren’t the one who turned it down, were you?”

He didn’t want to talk about this. He really, really didn’t, but she didn’t stop.

“And when you left C-Sec?”

Here he was, the woman he loved bleeding because of him, making him think about literally everything he’d ever ruined, and he didn’t get what in the world she was trying to do.

“Is this some way to get me to never have a talk with you again?” he finally demanded. He only realized once he’d said it that he sounded angry. He didn’t want to be angry. And he definitely didn’t want Arison to feel threatened.

She got to her feet slowly, still holding the cloth where it was, and looked at him intently. She definitely didn’t look scared or even like she might stop. No, she had an end goal to this, and they were going to reach it hell or high water.

“Your best trait, Garrus. Do you want me to say it or not?”

“What the hell does my dad have to do with my best trait?” he demanded.

“You’re loyal. You took my orders. You listened to me. You watched my six. Even when we disagreed, I could rely on you. I stepped into your crosshairs in front of Sidonis, and you stepped down. Ever since day one, I could trust you. So are you anything like Caitus? Yes or no?”

She was making it sound black or white, in a world full of grey that he had no idea what to do with. It wasn’t just a yes or a no, was it? It couldn’t be that simple. It couldn’t be.

But she was waiting for a response, just as commanding as ever, even when naked and bleeding.

“Yes.”

Because what was the difference, really?

This was the wrong response apparently, though, because Arison let out a sharp breath before tossing the cloth back at him. Garrus caught it on reflex.

“What does your father have to do with your best trait, Garrus? You want to know? You really want to know? Nothing. He had nothing to do with it. But you know what he did give you? Self-esteem so low that you won’t even listen to me when I tell you you aren’t anything like the people who enjoyed hurting me in every way you can imagine. Is it that hard to believe that maybe I loved you because of the fact that you respect me? That you’re a good person? That maybe you’re not the biggest imposter the galaxy has ever seen? You asked what I wanted from you, before. After you read about everything. And what I want is for you to treat me like you always have. None of this guilt over the fact that you happen to share a race with the rapist I’m currently planning on shooting in the face. It doesn’t help me, and it definitely doesn’t help you. Okay?”

“But…”

But what? Was she wrong? Was literally any part of what she was saying wrong? He’d never been good enough for his father, until all of a sudden the world was almost ending. And that had been whiplash in its own right, but, yeah, hating himself had to start somewhere, and his dad had definitely been the one to kick start it if nothing else.

And despite the fact that she was staring at him intensely, and despite the fact that her tone was harsh, she wasn’t just throwing barbs to throw barbs. She wasn’t an idiot. She didn’t just love him to hurt herself, and maybe, just maybe, she was right. If nothing else, he had done everything she had ever asked of him, hadn’t he?

“You were pretty good at getting these off me,” Arison commented as she collected her clothes up from off the floor and sitting back on the bed next to him, as he tried to come up with anything to say. “Do you think you can get them back on me just as well?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm moving to a Thursday-only update schedule, since I have two other projects (original fiction) running alongside this one, and I want to dedicate more attention to them. Thanks for hanging in there!


	33. Hope Upon Hope

It took a lot longer to get her stiff clothing back on her than it had to rip it all off of her. For one, Garrus was busy trying to sort through his thoughts, which meant he wasn’t paying amazing attention to detail, especially since he was also trying to keep from hurting her by accident with his talons or by manhandling any part of her too much.

It wasn’t bad, though, the painstaking dance they were doing. It was intimate, just in a very different way than desperate sex was. And this intimacy wasn’t loaded with shit that Garrus had to sift through. And it didn’t occur to him until he help her get an arm into the long sleeve of her shirt that she had actually asked for his help. She hadn’t just struggled with it until he got frustrated with her and jumped in.

This was her reaching out, and even if he was still trying to grapple with everything she had said, the closeness was… nice.

“You’re good at this,” Arison murmured as he knelt to help her get her feet into the legs of her pants.

“What, being on my knees for you?” he asked as he eased the fabric up passed her calves.

Even if this was a deflection of a sort, she gave a fond smile.

“Hmm, you still know exactly how to use your tongue, I’ll give you that, Vakarian. But I was meaning that you’re good at helping me out.”

“It’s easier when you ask for it.”

“It fucking sucks,” she muttered, trying to force some levity into her tone, even though she was definitely saying exactly how she felt.

She slid her pants on the rest of the way, but her fingers were struggling with the last detail of the button, so he moved her hands aside gently to slide it into the hole before getting to his feet.

Things weren’t closed nice and tight, not really. They still would need to talk. Even if she’d been adamant, even if she’d been so sure of her points, years of feeling like a failure didn’t go away after one conversation, especially not in the middle of an absolute mess of a political clusterfuck. There was really only one thing he could convince himself of: Shepard was right about people. She always was. And if she trusted him, he couldn’t be as bad as he felt like he was.

And if nothing else, he was here, now, helping her, and he wasn’t about to leave. Not unless it was what she really wanted.

She looked tired now, though, and she didn’t say anything as he awkwardly began to redress as well.

She watched, silently, and eventually said, “I would offer to help, but I think that if I tried to get up, I’d pass out.”

As he pulled his pistol back into its holster, Garrus took a moment to assess the situation.

He still didn’t feel good about what had happened, especially now that he could see the grey fabric at her shoulder darkening a bit. He needed to learn about what happened to Ternian, and he needed to make sure that no one knew who Arison was. Ternian wasn’t an idiot. She’d definitely piece two and two together if she saw Arison. Or at least if she saw the way he looked at her.

“I’m just that good, huh?” he asked, as he began to come up with a pretty solid plan.

She couldn’t know he was trying to protect her, or she’d turn him down immediately. So dancing around some things was pretty much the only option, at least for the time being.

“Like I said, best sex I’d had in half a decade.”

“I know you haven’t let anyone else even look at you sideways. So that’s really not a compliment.”

“What do you want me to say?” she asked, a wicked grin crossing her face. “That when Nwosu was jigsawing my bits back together, I asked her to make sure it could still handle massive turian cock?”

Humans and asari had this strange thing their bodies did when they were embarrassed. Blood rushed to their face, which was the weirdest way for their bodies to communicate something like that, but the unabashed way Arison was willing to talk about some things had him pretty sure he would have been doing something like that if his species was capable of it.

“Massive?” he ventured pretty much on reflex.

“Want me to stroke something else while I stroke your ego?” she demanded. “Already? Aren’t you too old for this?”

“You know exactly how to tire a turian out, Shepard. How about I get you something to eat and some medigel, before you try to get me back into bed?”

The same way he’d lied about his reasons for wanting to be in the shower with her those days ago, he was sort of lying now, but she needed to rest, and he needed to find out what was happening around them. The world didn’t just slow to a halt because they had shit to work out. If anything, it was spinning faster, he’d just been ignoring it for a moment’s respite.

“I’ll take the food, but don’t worry about the medigel. I’ll just make myself comfortable,” she said after a second of hesitation where he thought she was going to see right through his thin veneer of a premise. But if she did, she was either too tired to say anything, or she was just tired enough to let it slide.

“Alright, I’ll be back,” he promised before he left.

As the door shut, though, her comment about the medigel had him pausing. She didn’t want it healed for some reason, and he wasn’t convinced there was really a healthy reason for that, but then again, he wasn’t a therapist, and he definitely didn’t know more about Arison than she knew about herself.

He would get her some, and if she didn’t use it, for whatever reason, he had at least done what he felt was the right thing to do. If it scarred, it was a pretty clear message the moment she wasn’t wearing such carefully stitched clothes. And as he walked down the halls, he couldn’t stop thinking about what exactly that message was and why Shepard wanted it.

She had never been keen on getting married. She’d been clear, before everything, that she wanted to spend her life with him, but marriage was something she’d skirted around. Rings and all of that, the human sentiments of it, didn’t seem to interest her. So why did she want scars as proof when she never wanted painless metal? And why now? They’d always healed his bites without comment or question before. And while just about everything had changed, Garrus had no idea what part of everything had caused her to decide she was going to keep these scars now of all damn times.

Was it because of Caitus? She had never been interested in making people jealous, except that one time she had intentionally played with Vega during that one dance they’d had on the Citadel. And she’d done that because she was absolutely done with his pinning or whatever it had been he was doing. And if she wanted Caitus to see the bite, there definitely wasn’t a healthy reason for it. Either she wanted to say that she belonged to another turian, which was absolutely not something Garrus wanted her to think, or she wanted get Caitus upset because someone else was using something that had belonged to him, which he also hated. Plus, neither of those was going to have a good outcome.

Before Garrus could get any further into that mess of thoughts, he turned the corner out of the living area to see Phoros standing in the hall, looking like she was expecting him.

“Colonel?” he asked, immediately pulling his shoulders back and trying incredibly hard not to think about the blue bruises Arison had left on his neck that would be noticeable if he got too much closer to the soldier.

“Ternian is stable. And asking for you. I was told you would be somewhere around here.”

A sigh of relief ripped from Garrus’ chest before he could even really register all of what she was saying. Shepard was right, she was always right. Ternian was going to be fine, and he hadn’t killed gotten another person involved with his mess only to get them killed, and maybe, must maybe, he wasn’t always fucking everything up.

But none of these things were really actively processing through the sheer relief.

The moment he took one step toward Phoros, to ask where Ternian was, he remembered his promise to Arison and the fact that he really needed her to not get suspicious or concerned and get herself involved in this. She didn’t want the world to see Commander Shepard as anything less than some auspicious figurehead, and if even one other person learned who she was, that carefully crafted standard she held for herself would crash around her. And she wasn’t ready for that. She already could barely handle her world as it was, and that was understandable considering the fact that every part of her life thus far had chewed her up and spat her out.

“Where is she?” he asked, building himself a very quick sub-plan.

“211. In the Western Wing.”

“I need you to do something for me,” he said.

He was torn. He couldn’t keep Ternian waiting, he really couldn’t. She’d nearly thrown away her life for him. But Arison was waiting for him. “Get something levo from the cafeteria and take it to 131b.”

It looked like Phoros wanted to question him, but she closed her mouth and gave a sharp nod before turning back toward the atrium, and this left Garrus free to rush toward Ternian’s room. It wasn’t in the OR area, so she really was recovering, and he could only hope that would be quick, for her sake. She wasn't exactly in the prime of her life anymore.

When he opened the unlocked door, he was completely unsurprised to see the general hooked up to several IV bags looking like she had seen hell and glowered back. She was awake, though, and she definitely had been waiting for him, sitting up in her hospital bed.

“It’s good to see you alive and breathing,” Garrus offered as the door slid shut behind him.

“Good to be alive and breathing,” Ternian countered.

Her voice sounded hoarse, and her subvocals were fried, and from the amount of blood they were trying to drain into her, Pallas really had been just so close to becoming a widow. Which didn’t feel great, even if it hadn’t happened, but Ternian picked up on his guilty subvocals and added,

“So what’s so special about this place, Vakarian? Other than the fact that they can raise the dead?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was, not only personally but creatively, a ROUGH week, since I had to rewrite the last three chapters I had written for this project. The good news, though, is that I'm much happier with how the ending is shaping up now. Thank you for all of your comments and kudos! They mean so much!


	34. Impermanence of Self

“_So what’s so special about this place, Vakarian? Other than the fact that they can raise the dead?”_

Her words settled in the air like a damn nerve gas, making every single muscle in Garrus' body tighten to the point of pain.

“What?” he demanded, because there was only one thing she could mean by that.

But how in the world could that be what she meant? Raising the dead? Ternian hadn’t seen Arison as she was being rushed to surgery. Arison hadn’t even been in the atrium until later. She had only gotten there by the time he was giving orders to Ternian’s men. So how could Ternian have known?

Unless she had seen senderless messages in his inbox from the secure server and deduced who could have sent them. How could she have gotten into his messages, though. And more importantly, why would she? What sort of suspicions would have her doing that? And not to mention that Arison had been so careful to cover her tracks, she always was. She was one of the best hackers Garrus had ever met, and that wasn’t exactly her most advertised feat, so even if Ternian had seen a format of message that shouldn't have existed, there wouldn't be a reason for her to suspect that it was Arison in the first place.

“I'd be dead if we’d gone to Palaven. This little side-trip saved a dead woman walking,” Ternian explained.

She had been talking about herself.

There was no way Garrus could hide his relief. He could physically feel the air leaving his lungs in a gust and his muscles unclenching all at once. Keeping Arison out of this was still a bridge he would need to burn later, but, at least right now, this was a small blessing. Ternian must have just read the whole thing as relief at hearing that she'd apparently been given a good prognosis, since she just shook her head at him.

“What happened?” he asked once finally could find words again.

“I met with Caitus. Privately. I bluffed through it. He must have seen right through me, so he poisoned me. I guess it caused a delayed reaction, so by the time I would have been dead, no one would have suspected the meeting had anything to do with it. I was reckless. But we have him against the wall, Vakarian. Which is more than most of the people out for him have managed.”

“Will your wife be safe?” Garrus asked.

“Pallas can hold her own. Caitus knows that if he touches her, there will be hell to pay. Killing me is one thing, but she’s from old Palaven stock. That would be declaring war on half of the Hierarchy. And he’s not an idiot. Unfortunately. Sit down, Vakarian. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

He opened his mouth to argue with her, but definitely couldn’t, because he was really, seriously beginning to realize how long it had been since he’d slept or eaten. The last twenty-four hours had been a clusterfuck by all accounts, and he was tired.

There were a couple of chairs in the room, so he pulled it over with its back to the door so he could be facing Ternian with no distractions.

“Do you have a plan?” she asked.

It was telling that she didn't ask what the plan was, just whether or not he had one.

“No. Not really,” Garrus admitted bringing a hand down his face, and the moment his palm made contact with his mandibles, he realized he hadn’t put his gloves back on.

It wasn’t that bad among other turians, really. The gloves were mostly so other races didn’t think too much about the talons, but he felt naked without them at this point. And not having them was more than a little telling, at least about how ill put together he was at this point if not about his love life.

“So what have you got here, then, other than a plan? A human hospital and some prayers? What resources do we have?”

It wasn’t hard to imagine that this was how she'd approached the defense of Palaven all those years ago. No one had had a concrete plan, Garrus remembered that it. The rule of thumb had just been to not die and to not let the Reapers win. She had probably asked these same questions then, and then with whatever answer she’d gotten out of them, she had pretty much single-handedly saved the homeworld. She wasn’t a politician or a mathematician, she was a military strategist.

And he could see from the glint in her eyes that she already had something of a plan of her own.

That was a damn relief, actually. Just the idea of having someone willing to set out the battle plan who wasn’t so entrenched in the details was a blessing from the Spirits themselves. She didn’t know Arison’s fears, and she didn’t know about Dr. Nwosu or the dead kids. She could actually look at it from a distance, and that was probably the only useful vantage point on the whole thing.

“We have a living witness who can attest to Caitus participating in the slave trade. There’s one recorded testimony missing, possibly, that he deleted from the station, and one witness dead.”

“And our assets?”

“Your ship, your men, your weapons, the station’s ten security guards, and me.”

“I’ve heard worse. What kind of witness are we talking about here? Someone we can march in front of Adrien? Or the kind who’ll only talk off the record?”

“The kind who would rather kill Caitus than be marched in front of Adrien.”

He answered honestly, because if Ternian was going to gift him with some plan, he needed to give her the truth, but that didn't mean that Garrus didn't expect the general to shoot down that idea immediately. It definitely wasn’t the most politically sound decision, even he knew that.

But instead, Ternian nodded to herself after a second.

“A witness is a witness,” she said slowly. “But can they actually kill him?”

And that was a million credit question, wasn’t it? Could Arison come face to Caitus and finish it? It wasn’t that he wasn’t sure she could kill. She was a one-woman war machine. No, this was about whether or not she could stand in front of the man who had raped her Spirits knows how many times and keep calm. And if she could look at him and keep it together, it would be something completely different for her survive whatever he might say to her.

On her own? He couldn’t even give any real promise one way or the other. There was the distinct possibility that seeing him in the flesh would only tamp down on her intensity, that she could say her peace and shoot him in the head without even so much as a single second thought. There was the other possibility, though, that Caitus could say something, make one wrong move, and send her into a panic attack like the one that had her completely broken down before, and that would leave her completely at his mercy.

But with people at her back? That was a different question.

If she knew that Garrus would stand at her side through anything, like he already had, she could do it. He was sure of that. Anything Caitus could try to pull, Garrus would be there to call any bluffs. Caitus wasn’t his to kill, but some part of Garrus, the same part of him that fell into the role of Archangel like he was born for it, could not wait to see the turian face some sort of justice, even if it was at the end of a dead woman’s rifle spiral.

“If she had back-up. Absolutely.”

“Well, Adrien won't be happy with this,” Ternian mused aloud. “But the worst he can do is court-martial us. And I’ve served with two of the five generals sitting on the military council right now. And Pallas’ aunt is a sitting member, too. And I don’t see them recusing themselves, since we aren’t exactly swimming in generals. But your position isn’t as comfortable.”

“I don’t care—”

“Well, I happen to,” Ternian insisted, running him over with an intensity in her gaze. “There are ways we can do this to help you out. You haven’t done anything so far that anyone will bother trying to get upset about, not with a well-known committee member dead. If you were to be somewhere else when Caitus dies, you would be—”

“No. I’m going to be there.”

“Vakarian, I’m more than three times your age. I could retire tomorrow if I wanted to. Whatever shit this stirs up, I can take it. My name can take it. I’ll always be the general who saved Palaven. If people are pissed enough, I’ll step down and start collecting my frankly absurd pension. You don’t have that security.”

“I don’t security. Besides, you said that everyone thinks of as the turian who helped Shepard save the world,” he countered, adding the last part with at some humor in his voice. He had a name for himself, even if he was only barely coming to realize he might deserve it.

Ternian let out a frustrated, grinding sigh, because apparently she hadn't found his comment funny at all.

“Vakarian, I know you’re not an idiot. An idiot wouldn’t have lived this long. So, I’m telling you to listen to me, and listen to me well. This is bigger than you think. Killing Caitus won’t magically save the galaxy. This isn’t like fighting geth, when we could just shut down a mainframe. Caitus isn’t even a main player in the slave trade. As far as I can tell, he just dips his toes in. So I’m telling you now, if you involve yourself in this publicly, you have to be prepared for more than just what the Hierarchy is going to put you through. A court-martial would be the least of your issues. Adrien likes you, so maybe you’ll just get a slap on the wrist, but that depends on how pissed Caitus’ allies will be. But the slavers themselves? Anyone more powerful that did what Caitus does?”

“General, I—”

He wanted to tell her that he'd been hunted before. He wanted to tell her that he'd survived it well enough, all things considered. He wanted to tell her that it was worth it, even if he ended up with more than a rocket to the face this time, because those dead kids deserved it, because Arison deserved it, because every nameless victim Caitus had touched deserved it. He had more to say, but the door slid open behind him, and from the way Ternian’s eyes wrench from him instantly, he knew something was wrong.

Garrus whipped around in the chair, already reaching for his pistol, but he stopped moving completely once he saw who had gotten Ternian's attention so quickly.

Commander Shepard stood in the doorway.

Her black hair, with its occasional grey strands, was pulled back into the austere bun that every propaganda picture of Shepard used. She was wearing the Alliance blues, and, Spirits, she looked better in them now than ever, even if the tapered cut hinted at exactly how thin she was now, not like the wiry strength she had had before.

“General,” Arison addressed from the door, “permission to enter?”

Garrus couldn't think about anything, because he was thinking about everything. He could see her taking propped up on a cargo box, sniper rifle aimed at the hallway, taking down enemy after enemy. He could hear her ever present, “One shot, one kill,” that she would sometimes murmur calmly to herself when things started getting desperate. He could remember seeing her that first time in the Citadel, back when he couldn't believe a human was being seriously considered for Spectre-hood. Back when he didn't understand what love drove people to do. He remembered that final time she looked back at him before going into the beam, blood spattered on her face and loose hair framing her face.

He was completely lost in something like nostalgia, because this was how he knew her, how he remembered her, and this was what he had always dreamed she would come back looking like.

He couldn't do anything but stare like he was coming out of a bunker into Palaven's afternoon sun until he heard a strange coughing noise from behind him.

Garrus whipped around to see that Ternian was trying to laugh. She couldn't actually make the noise right, it was coming out more like she was trying to spit something up, thanks to whatever the the poison had done to her. She was laughing, though, genuinely laughing, looking directly at the dead Commander like someone who had just witnessed the greatest practical joke of all time.

“Who else could get you all the way out to Arcturus, Vakarian?” she demanded, still laughing, despite the fact that some blood made its way down from the corners of her mandibles. And then, before Garrus could figure out exactly what the general meant by that, she looked back to Arison. “Since when to do the dead take orders from the living, Commander? Come on in.”

Arison gave one of her small smiles, the kind she gave when she actually liked the person she was dealing with. It was like five years hadn't passed, and he was just beside Commander Shepard again, facing the world head-on. He could barely think anything cohered, but he did notice that she didn’t spare even a single glance in his direction.

As she walked in to stand next to his chair, he also noticed that, fortunately, the high collar of the blues hid the bite he had left, and, evidently, she had taken some of that medicine that stabilized her, because her legs were mostly holding their own now. The way the pants were cut, it would have been hard to tell if she was shaking, but she was standing like she felt balanced.

Commander Shepard couldn’t be weak, so she was taking drugs to look stronger than she was. It was a lot like it had been before, with the stims. The thought had him almost frowning, but at least now there was someone to keep an eye on her intake, he guessed.

“So, I’ll take a wild guess and say that you’re the one who’s going to beat me to putting a bullet in Caitus’ head,” Ternian almost-asked. There wasn’t any judgment behind what she was saying, and if anything, she seemed in better spirits now that she had been just a minute ago.

“I am,” Arison affirmed with a sharp nod.

“Always heard you were a sharpshooter, so I guess I should have seen that coming. I’m more of an up-close-and-personal sort of turian.”

“We can’t all shoot a 345,” Arison graciously offered, touting the number like it wasn’t something she hadn’t worked her ass off to achieve.

“Five shots short of perfect, Commander. We’ll just need to make sure Caitus don’t get to be one of those five.”

Spirits, seeing Arison like this, like she was Commander Shepard again, imperious and whip-smart, like the years hadn’t passed at all, had Garrus shaking his head.

The woman he loved was finally back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally catching up to the chapters I've actually written recently, since I've been dealing with such a miserable writer's block. I used to be 18 chapters ahead, and now we're down to four. My hope is that I can at least finish this without any more update-schedule changes!


	35. Rhythms Like The Waves

It wasn’t until later that Garrus had questions, a lot of questions, but at least while he was sitting next to Arison, listening to her and Ternian planning, he was sliding back to where he'd been before the war had ended. It was like he was back on the Normandy, the closest thing to a place he could call home, with Arison coolly figuring out how to avoid the end of the world, surrounded by a people who were more of a family than a crew.

It wasn't exactly the same for a hell of a lot of reasons, but it felt just as right.

“Do you know where Caitus is, exactly?” Arison asked.

“Probably still on Taetrus. Probably hiding behind a hundred hired guns.”

“If he thinks that will stop me, then he’s in for a surprise.”

Finally, Garrus stepped in, finding his way into their rhythm with ease. It was just like the old days.

“I’m not sure he knows either of you are alive. Not for certain. Why wouldn't he have sent heavy hitters to take you out, if he knew you were in Havenwood this whole time? It doesn’t make sense.”

This was almost the same conversation he'd had with Marina, but if there was one thing he'd figured out from that talk, it'd been that if Caitus did know Arison was alive, he was playing some sort of game, and you didn't go charging straight into a game when you didn't know the rules. That was common sense.

Arison turned to him Garrus, finally looking at him. The way her cold, blue eyes settled on him? She was looking at him the same way she had when he’d given advice on the Normandy. She was listening to him. She respected him. She was making a plan, and she wanted to hear everyone's input. That was why she had been such a great leader.

This was the Arison he had fallen in love with.

“Even if he doesn’t know I’m alive,” Arison conceded after she'd thought about it for a moment, “he doesn’t know whether or not General Ternian is alive. Her crew hasn’t sent any off-facility messages, so her whereabouts and status are still a secret.”

Garrus let out a subvocal hum of fond appreciation, because he knew Arison had jammed any way to message off the facility. That noise was a mistake, though, because for the first time in weeks, there was actually another turian in the room, someone who could actually hear all of what he was communicating. And everything Garrus was communicating was pretty damning, and he didn't need the calculating look in her eyes to know exactly how damning.

But she turned back to Arison without any sort of comment or subvocal response of her own.

Here he was, not wearing gloves, practically purring, so there was no way Ternian hadn’t made an educated guess. After all, they’d been together before the end of the war, and they'd been pretty public about it, too. Maybe Ternian thought he’d known about Arison all along and was a better liar than he could ever hope to be. Maybe she figured that they’d worked things out.

Maybe she didn’t care at all. She probably didn't, and he more important things to be worrying about than what the general he looked up to thought about his love life.

And Arison's addition didn't supply anything new, not really.

“That’s not much of an advantage,” Garrus reminded.

Because it wasn't. It wasn't like Ternian was really his goal here. Whatever his goal was, his real one, it didn't matter in the end of Ternian lived or died. If she was alive, he would just try to kill her again, probably. She knew too much to keep living unless she agreed to work with him. And Garrus knew her better than to think that would ever happen.

“No. It’s not,” Ternian agreed. And she didn't look happy about the comment either. Probably not because Garrus had said it, but probably because she hated that Caitus had the high ground no matter which way you looked at it.

“We don’t have much of an advantage,” Arison admitted, “unless we surprise him, and we don’t know what information he has, so we don’t know what will give us the drop on him. There are only four ways he could be looking at this: he knows Ternian is alive, he thinks Ternian is dead, he knows I’m alive, or he thinks I’m dead. Let’s say he’s being careful. He knows I’m alive and he suspects Ternian is alive. He’ll be prepared for us. That’s the worst-case scenario. So what can we do if that's the case?”

“I only have a dozen men, and even though I trust each and every one of them with my life, I’m not willing to let them get dragged into this more than I can help. They can drop us off somewhere. That’s it. If there’s combat, it’ll come down to the three of us,” Ternian insisted.

Garrus wanted to argue with her, even if he knew she wouldn't budge, because if they didn't have the extra turian manpower, she was singlehandedly stacking the odds against them.

But on the other hand, Garrus didn’t even fault her decision, because it was the same one he would have made in her place. She was looking out for her soldiers, like any good general was supposed to. She was doing the right thing by her men, even if it meant making things riskier for the mission, because she didn't want to see their careers tanked by her personal crusades.

If only there were more generals like her, maybe the galaxy wouldn't be such a shitshow.

“We’ve had worse odds,” Garrus offered, and it wasn't a lie. They'd landed on Thessia as it was falling and made it out Spirits-know-how. They'd survived getting to see the mother of all thresher maws taking out a Reaper. He'd been holed up on Omega and taken a rocket to the face. They'd had worse odds, and they'd beaten it.

He didn't want Ternian's soldiers involved either, but it looked like Arison wasn't about to argue with either of them about it.

“He’ll be expecting us to storm in,” Arison said. “So what if we don’t?”

He knew exactly what she was going to say. He knew exactly what she was thinking, and there was no way it was going to happen. If he had to sabotage it himself, he would.

“You’re not going in there alone,” Garrus insisted.

And she ignored him entirely. And gone was her trying to see what other people thought of her plan, too.

“If I messaged him on the server, I’m sure he would respond,” she continued like a fucking bulldozer just tearing through every sane part of a plan they could have been making.

“No,” Garrus said sharply. “That’s a bad plan for a million reasons, and you know it.”

She was just trying to sacrifice herself again, just dying to become a martyr because that was all she knew. And it might have been her only option at some point but it wasn't now. And he was right here, proof that all she had to do was ask for help. Which apparently, she still couldn't do, not when it counted.

He wasn't going to let her do this again.

Ternian had to see it was a shit plan, right? All the general needed to say was that she also thought it was a bad idea too, and Arison would listen. It was that simple, so when Ternian didn't immediately nix it, Garrus snapped to look at her, disapproval rumbling in his subvocals. Since she could hear them, he might as well be making himself pretty damn clear.

“Why would he respond to you?” Ternian asked.

Garrus wished he could make Ternian take that question back, because just hearing it meant that Arison thought it could work. She wanted someone to say it was okay for her to do this, and she's always gotten that approval before. Either from Hackett or Anderson or whatever CO didn't care if she ended up broken over and over.

And maybe it worked before, because there weren't any Reapers running around, but this plan wasn't going to work. It wouldn't, because Caitus was prepared, and Arison could never be, not for this. Not for the way she wanted to do it.

She wasn't listening, and she wasn't going to listen even if he set all the facts in front of her. She was disabled. She still had panic attacks. She still hadn't dealt with all the shit from her past. She was just going to try to do what she always did. She was always the one to take a shot before any of the crew could. She'd been the last one off the SR1. She’d been the one to beam up to the Catalyst.

“We’re not doing this,” Garrus hissed.

But Arison just answered Ternian's question without even blinking at Garrus' glare.

“Because even if he didn’t know that I was alive, I have incriminating knowledge. He’ll meet with me because he needs to tie up loose ends, especially loose ends with big names—”

“We’re not doing this, it’s—”

But no one was listening to him. He might as well have been trying to talk at them in space.

“If he does meet you, do you think you can try to get him to a neutral location, Commander?”

“He won’t be expecting anything if I walk into wherever he’s holed up—”

“Spirits, Arison, you can’t actually be considering this—”

She was, he knew she was, but wasn't she hearing herself? This was a dumb, fucking plan. It was just another way for her to hurt herself and pretend like it helped other people.

“If you think you can get him alone, away from his guards—”

“I can. I remember what he li—”

“Enough!” Garrus shouted for maybe the first time around Arison that wasn’t in combat, and he definitely didn't mean to.

_What he likes._

That was what she had been going to say, and her feelings be damned, he wasn't going to hear anything more about how Arison was just going to walk back into being... whatever the fuck she'd been to Caitus, a possession? No. She wasn't going to do that, because if she tried, he'd find some way to get Marina to drug her, and he'd take care of Caitus himself.

They were staring at him.

And even if they way they were looking at him almost made him feel like he’d fucked up, he wasn’t about to step down. Not about this. Even if Ternian outranked him, that didn’t mean that she was going to be the deciding vote in this extralegal operation that they were all apparently planning.

If anyone was the expert on what dumb shit in vigilantism would get you killed, it was him.

And she wasn’t going to be a thing to Caitus ever again, even for an act, because for Arison, it wouldn't really be an act, not completely.

“There has to be a better plan than that,” he offered stiffly, despite the fact that neither stopped their silent glares.

“I can handle myself,” Arison said dangerously slowly.

He didn’t want to hurt her. He really didn’t.

But she needed a damn dresser-top full of medication to be even remotely functional. She wasn’t a weak person, but she was weakened right now. And she didn’t seem to understand that. But almost anything that he said now would upset her more, put her more on the defensive. He couldn’t remind her about her drug abuse. He couldn’t remind her about the concerns she'd voiced about her combat readiness a while back. Because all of those things would lead to the sort of fight Ternian wouldn't understand and definitely didn't need to be around for.

He needed her to understand that she couldn’t do this alone, and he needed to do that without infuriating her.

He was desperately floundering the silence until he remembered what and Arison had agreed to once they’d talked things through earlier.

She's said she'd let him help. And he'd said he'd walk if she didn't let him.

“Arison, we had a deal. You let me help you, or this won’t work.”

It was vague, because Ternian didn't need to know anything more about their relationship, but Arison understood, because her stone-cold expression actually dropped into something

Actually seeing her show emotion was one thing. It was even weirder to see her show things she'd always hidden. It was all there now: fear and shame and frustration and anger. Then, after a second, just resignation.

“Then what are _we_ going to do?” she asked, and she actually sounded like she was asking for help.

She really didn't have a back up plan.

Shit.

Okay, so there had to be a better solution, right? Arison charging headlong into a trap was outright stupid, and he was more than happy to tell her so. But what was the better solution?

Caitus couldn't be lured out. He wasn't stupid. He'd survived this long by being ruthless, and even if poisoning wasn't his usual MO, that didn't mean he was losing control or panicking. It just meant that he'd needed to try something new for whatever reason. So they couldn't lure him out, there was no way. If he couldn't be lured out, they had to go to him, but just charging in was going to get a lot of people hurt or killed.

So what? Just ask him to talk, like they were going to have some catching up to do?

“Well?” Arison asked, but now she sounded almost desperate.

Fuck.

Garrus knew exactly what he needed to do, and he hated it.

Caitus hated humans, but he thought he was in the right about all his fucked up bullshit. He felt superior to everyone else, and he liked it when people knew it, too. So Garrus just needed to flip the script of Arison's initial idea. There just needed to be a different person facing Caitus.

“I message him. I ask for a meeting.”

Arison just stared at him like she was calculating exactly what he had said. She considering it, at least, which he hadn't been banking on something. Or maybe she was considering knocking him out and locking him in a room to go on her own.

“Go on,” Ternian encouraged, her brow plates locking together.

At least she thought there was something to what he was saying.

“I ask to meet up with him, because I want to understand what's happening.”

It could work. Even if Caitus did suspect a trap, Garrus knew, deep down, that he wouldn't be able to resist trying to get another person on his side. He would want Garrus, someone close to Ternian and Arison, to tell him that he understood why he did what he did. Caitus would want Garrus, known across the galaxy as the turian that helped stop the end of the world to be his ally.

“And Shepard?”

“Comes with me. Infiltrator-style, cloaked.”

“You're sure he'll actually agree to talk with you?” Arison asked.

“He will,” Ternian assured, even if Arison hadn't been asking her that question.

The general evidently had the same train of thought, because she was nodding her head very slowly.

“And he won't be worried about me?” Arison asked.

“Why would he?” the general asked with a gentle edge to her tone that Garrus had never heard a turian give before.

He froze, though, because if he'd asked that question, Arison would have fucking lost it.

Ternian wasn’t an idiot. She'd probably already connected the dots about why Arison was involved in this mess. Garrus had said there was a living witness. The whole galaxy knew Shepard had been from Mindoir. She had to know, but Spirits, he could never have been the one to ask Arison that.

But for some reason, Arison didn't snarl or get cold, like Garrus was bracing himself for. No, she looked...wounded.

“So I ask to set up a meeting with him?” Garrus pressed Ternian, because he wanted to give Arison some space.

And then what? Chat? Listen to whatever bullshit he was going to spew and wait for Arison to shoot him when there was an opportunity or she'd heard enough. She wasn't going to get closure out of this, Caitus would never say he was sorry for what he did. He would only justify it in a thousand different disgusting ways, and they'd both get to hear it all.

But there really wasn't another option, was there? They couldn't bring him to justice, even if Arison was willing to go on record about what had happened to her. Caitus was a powerful man. He might just get off with a slap on the wrist. Adrien would be furious, especially if he knew exactly who Caitus had raped, but there wouldn't be much of anything he could do without pissing off the old guard, and he needed their support, especially if there was a colonization war on the horizon. Taking him through other official channels involved too many fucking variables in this goddamn mess of an equation. Garrus did calculus for fun, and this was giving him a headache.

“He'll probably expect Arison to follow you, one way or another. He'll at least guess that you have back up. Lull him into sense of security, act like you understand what he's saying. Then he'll think you won't call in the reinforcements. Then... Well, then, one of you two makes sure he doesn't walk out. My people can get rid of the body, so no one can conduct an autopsy.”

Garrus stiffened at that offer.

It was one thing to make Caitus get on his knees and shoot him execution-style in the back of the head. It was something else entirely to do whatever Ternian was expecting them to. He wasn't sure what she was imagining, but Ternian was looking at Arison, giving her permission to do something.

And Arison seemed to understand, even if Garrus didn't, because her lips quirked into a very small, very angry smile.

“Okay,” Garrus agreed.

Even if he had to turn his back on what was going to happen to Caitus, the man wouldn't ever go before any court, and Arison's justice had always been tempered before. She would get whatever she needed, and she deserved that much.

It was going to be a long day, traveling to Taetrus, so Garrus added, “But before I send anything, we are all sleeping.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there's any typos this round. I've rewritten this chapter three or four times now, and I'm finally happy with it, but I'm way too tired to do any more edits than I already have.


	36. Glass Houses

When Garrus woke up, it was slowly. For once, he wasn’t hit with something that made him want to go back to sleep forever, or maybe worse, hit with violent panic. He wasn’t waking up to remember that Shepard was dead and he was alone in the universe forever or that there was some mystery he was supposed to be solving that had dozens of people counting on him. He was just… waking up.

And behind him, he could hear slow, measured breathing. Arison’s breathing.

It took him a good second to remember everything.

This was his room. His bed. The pillows were actually still piled up under his neck. He was in his borrowed room with Arison behind him, and from the heat she was giving off, she was at least mostly undressed.

Right, because last night Arison had sidled up to him and asked if she could crash at his place. She'd been tired, and it wasn't an offer of anything. The medicine she'd taken to look strong in front of Ternian had been wearing off, too, so she'd been shaking pretty bad. He's said sure, and Arison had ended up collapsed in his bed.

Her place would have been a long walk with her legs shaking like that, but something else came to mind, too... No wonder she'd wanted to sleep here, when he’d locked her in her own room earlier. Or he'd at least locked it behind him to make her work to get out. He'd meant it as a message that he'd really wanted her to stay put. And even if she hadn't actually been stuck there, Arison hated feeling trapped. So, yeah, her not wanting to sleep in her own room made sense.

Shit, that didn't feel good. He’d been trying to keep her safe, because Sarisa'd made it sound so desperate. It had been desperate, sort of, but not the kind of desperate that meant actively slowing your girlfriend with PTSD down with something that probably triggered her.

He’d done what he had thought was best, though, because he'd been sure Caitus had finally decided to stop toying with everyone. And doing what he had would probably have been necessary if the bastard really had shown up.

But maybe he was wrong.

Because she'd asked that question a few days ago. Would he have listened to her and respected her if she'd said she didn't want his help recovering? And he'd known the answer was no and that ignoring the only thing she'd ever asked of him probably would've destroyed their relationship.

She would've wanted the choice to face Caitus or not.

She needed respect more than she needed to be sheltered. And besides, her knowing even part of what he'd thought was going on probably would've been better than her trying to imagine what would have him panicking like that.

So, yeah, locking her in her room definitely hadn’t been one of his best decisions, even if he'd just wanted to protect her, because that was all he ever wanted to do. Maybe, though... Maybe he didn’t need to protect her from as much as he wanted to. If something was going to hurt her, she needed to make the choice to confront it. He couldn't make those decision for her. People had made decisions for her her whole life.

“You’re thinking about something,” Arison murmured sleepily from behind him, bringing her small hand up so it was resting on his waist.

She was so warm, and it had to be a human thing with whatever their insane internal temperature was. Being near her was like basking in Palaven’s sun.

“What were you thinking about?” she pressed, “I can practically hear your gears turning.”

It took some pillow-moving and some awkward shifting, but Garrus rolled over so they could have a real conversation.

Arison had definitely just woken up. She still looked tired, with grey under her eyes, but when hadn’t she? Even when she was unstoppable, a force of nature, really, she was still exhausted.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” he admitted after trying to not think about how damn tired she seemed.

She was beautiful, really beautiful, with her black hair falling across her neck like oil. But looking at her hair meant that he could see the scabs on her neck and shoulders that were still there. If she'd used any medigel, it would be completely gone by now, and it was still irritated, especially where her bra straps had been. There was some dried blood smeared around from where they must have reopened the bite, too.

It didn't look good, even if in just about any other circumstance, Garrus might have found it hot as hell.

Why hadn't she used medigel?

“I think I left you first,” Arison argued, because she was trying to deflect, but she was definitely too tired to do a good job at it.

She didn't want to talk about it. But that didn't mean they shouldn't.

Christ, he really had bitten deep into her, hadn't he? He could make out where each and every one of his teeth'd broken the skin. He'd bitten her that hard plenty of times, but they'd used medigel right away, so he'd never really seen how clear the marks were. And with so much of her skin grafted and burned, even if there'd been some small scars from bites before, they weren't identifiable now.

Anyone could take one look at the wound and know it was made by a turian. And it didn't take a genius to think about when it had happened.

“You know what I mean,” Garrus insisted. “Earlier. When Ternian was carted in. That’s why you didn’t want to go to your room last night, right? You didn’t want to feel trapped again.”

He wasn't looking at her face, because he was too busy trying to keep him from thinking too much about the bite. But his hand was still moving up to her shoulder.

“You don’t want to hear all the--” she tried to brush off.

They needed to talk about that, but her skin felt so strange under his fingers. Smooth until he hit the strangely textured, rough dried blood.

“Why didn't you use medigel?”

The words slipped out. He really hadn't meant to ask it.

And apparently Arison wanted to talk about that even less than she wanted to talk about the other things that happened yesterday, because she circled back to why she'd crashed in his room.

“I was pissed, Garrus,” she conceded, “but it's fine.”

She didn't sound pissed now, but that didn't mean it was fine.

And she really fucking didn't wanna talk about the bite, did she? The last time he'd brought it up, she'd starting a fucking impromptu and uncertified as hell therapy session with him about his self-worth. And now she wanted to talk about her history of being locked up against her will to avoid it.

But even if she whipped another unlicensed therapy session out of her ass, she wasn't going to avoid it this time.

“Why haven't you healed this?” he asked, finally looking her in the eyes.

“Garrus...”

Her lips were locking together. Her eyebrows were pulling together.

She really didn't want to talk about it. But they needed to. He needed to. Before they faced Caitus.

“I'm serious, Arison.”

She moved lightning fast, so apparently she was having one of her better days, because she grabbed his hand pulled it away from her skin before he could even think about pulling away on his own. And she was holding his wrist with her tiny, thin fingers with a strength he hadn't known she still had. Just like in that bar on the Citadel those weeks ago.

“It's a choice. I choose what I do with my body.”

If he'd been through what she had saying that, he'd be furious. He'd be pissed as hell, but she wasn't anything other than dead serious. Not angry, not scared. It was one of the intense sort of looks that she got when she was serious about something.

She needed to choose.

Dr. Nwosu had told her she was going to live, and those skin grafts had changed almost every inch of Arison's body. Miranda'd pieced Arison back together from just about nothing, and she'd remade just about everything that made Arison Arison. Even if she'd been tasked with bringing Shepard back exactly the same, Arison had come back missing scars. She'd mentioned that once. And he knew she couldn't have kids. She didn't have periods either. She was a kid when they'd taken out whatever they had from her.

Her whole life was her body being torn apart and put back together by experts without her getting a single fucking say in it. She hadn't agreed to live with any of it. And even if looking at the red skin around the scabs made Garrus a little sick... Well... It made sense.

And she did want this. She'd wanted sex. She'd enjoyed herself. So how bad was it that she wanted to keep a scar of something good that she had a choice in? He didn't like the things other people might think about her. Or him. But it made sense.

“It's okay,” she added, softer this time, because she apparently knew him well enough to recognize how uncomfortable he was. She even let go of his hand to stroke one of his mandibles, which felt just as good as it felt wrong. She shouldn't be comforting him. It was supposed to be happening the other way around.

“It’s really, really not,” he insisted.

“I’ve been through worse. Survived it, too.”

“That's exactly what I mean. That doesn't make it okay,” he insisted, finally sitting up.

Pulling away from her touch was hard, but he wasn't about to let her act like her pain was hurting him.

And he'd said that too sharp, but this was too much to be talking about first thing in the morning. But there wasn't really a way to back out now, so he just sat there. Watching. Waiting for Arison's face to fall, because she'd been so carefully keeping calm this whole time.

“You didn’t read the whole file,” she recalled after a moment. It wasn't an accusation... But he sure as hell wasn't sure what it was.

“I couldn’t… It…I…”

He couldn't get a coherent thought out because...

Because even if someone could type out everything that people had done to Arison, words couldn't really describe it. Not really. He could imagine all he wanted, but that didn’t mean he'd ever understand what she’d survived. Or how she’d survived.

And even if he wanted to try to imagine what it was like to live through that, and he really didn't, he also just couldn’t. He wasn’t deluded enough to think that he could pretend to be her or understand what her life had been like. Even if it seemed like she thought he could.

He felt weak. He couldn’t read it. He couldn’t submit himself to that level of evil. It was one thing to know it existed somewhere in the universe, hopefully just in the past. It was different when it was someone he loved. And reading it written with clinical coldness, like that could describe what she'd survived, seemed just so damn wrong.

“Someday,” she said slowly, staring through him like she could see his spirit, “I want you to. Maybe not the whole thing. But more of it.”

“Why?”

But as soon as he asked the question, he knew the answer.

She wanted to be understood. She wanted him to know her, to know why she did the things she did, why she acted the way she did. She'd understood him instantly, but who'd ever really understood her? People thought they did, sure, tons of them. He'd even thought that maybe he had before she’d 'died,’ but he hadn’t, had he?

Marina was probably the closest to truly understanding, but Marina was her doctor or something. That was mostly professional. Arison didn't have a family, and who didn’t want their partner to understand them?

Before Garrus could backtrack, because he was definitely planning to, Arison pulled away from him and gave him a thin smile that almost looked sad.

He knew exactly what she was thinking.

When they met Caitus, he would understand some part of her past, and it was going to hurt. Whether it was the way Caitus talked about her or the things he just implied, the other turian was going to tell Garrus about what he'd done, and Garrus was going to just have to listen and wait and keep calm until Arison could kill him.

“Arison,” he started. He wasn’t sure how to finish it, though. Did he want to give her an out? To tell her that she didn’t always have to be brave? That she didn’t have to be the one to end Caitus?

“Garrus?”

She sounded nervous, which had him reeling.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

The smile that grew across her face now wasn’t forced, and it wasn’t a lie. But she quickly caught herself and began to shake her head. She probably thought that she'd done what anyone else would've in her situation. She didn’t know that most people would have cracked under the stress of literally any single even she’d lived through, let alone survive all of it combined.

“I can’t even run a ten minute mile right now,” she commented before pushing herself out of his bed and slowly, very slowly, getting to her feet.

“I’m pretty sure you know that wasn’t what I meant.”

“I’m pretty sure you know I’m pathologically incapable of accepting compliments. And we both know you shouldn’t be throwing stones in glass houses.”

He hadn’t heard that human turn of phrase before, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out what it meant, and it had him fondly shaking his head at her. She was a force of nature. Fear didn't stop her, and death sure as hell couldn't. She'd held her own. And she'd do it again.

And that was all he could think about as he sat up and watched Arison painstakingly retrieve her uniform from where she'd diligently folded it on his dresser the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The world is a mess. Take care of yourselves.


	37. The Valley of the Shadow of Death

When Arison had walked into Ternian's room like a ghost from half a decade ago, it'd stopped just about every thought Garrus had had in his head. And it was the exact same thing now, as she settled the thick, starched fabric on her body. She was so precise about everything. She made sure each crease was folded perfectly. Every tab on her chest was parallel to the floor and spaced the same.

And even if her hands were shaking enough that he could see it, Commander Shepard really was back. He wasn't just looking at that shitty VI on the Citadel and pathetically pretending that it was really her. She was alive and breathing and right in front of him.

A while back, before they were anything serious, she'd mentioned that she wasn't attractive by human standards, and he'd actually given out a shocked laugh at that, because he didn't know a single person who didn't want to be her or be in bed with her. And even if her nose had been broken half a dozen times, which seemed like a major human defect that that could even happen, the moment she put on that uniform, no one was looking at much else. At least he wasn't.

He’d always been a sucker for someone in uniform, but what turian wasn't? He’d heard all the jokes a thousand times before, especially back when they'd been dating publicly. Even Adrien had made some passing comment about Shepard cutting a fine figure in her blues. Garrus wasn't a jealous turian, and Adrien had been in awe of her. She was symbol, and kitted out like that, she really did make humans look like a force to be reckoned with. It'd been a hell of a compliment.

And Garrus had just responded with his subvocals humming pride, because damn.

“Take a picture,” Arison interrupted as she pulled her hair out of the messy bun she'd worn to sleep. “It'll last longer.”

“Bold to assume I haven’t been recording everything,” he retorted as he grabbed his visor from where he had set it on the nightstand the night before. He felt just as naked without it as he did without gloves. Or the rest of his clothes.

And he hadn’t been, of course, because there couldn't be any proof of any of the shit they were doing. And more importantly, Arison trusted him to let her know when he was recording. They'd messed around with it before, but he'd deleted those videos years ago, because rewatching them had just hurt. Actually, he hadn’t recorded a single thing since leaving the Citadel. It'd been providing him data, sure, but he’d actually turned off the recorder function a while back so there wasn't any chance of it picking anything up.

But now that she was standing there, deftly twisting her hair back, showing off her neck, it was tempting to know he could see her like this whenever he wanted with just a couple of clicks. Arison was proud, though, and she wouldn’t want anyone to have any record of how gaunt she looked now. Once she was healthier, though, and had put back on maybe thirty pounds, he'd ask to make some new videos. Hopefully, some even without the uniform.

“Keep it in your pants. Fahri will be ready to leave in an hour,” Arison commented while looking at a message on her omnitool.

She didn’t sound nervous at all. He couldn't pick up anything from her, actually, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. Sometimes she just focused in before a battle, and then she’d done some of her best work. He could only hope that this was one of those times.

“That's a whole hour. We could do a lot in an hour...”

He had a lot to get done before they left, so he wasn't serious. But the way Arison rolled her eyes at him with a small smile was exactly what he'd been looking for.

“You think you're hot shit, huh?” she demanded as she settled her arms across her chest.

“You're the one who came twice yesterday.”

“Hmm.”

It was like this was just another day. It was like they weren't just standing in front of an airlock about to be spaced and hoping their gear could hold up to it. And he didn't want this to end. But if they only had an hour, that really wasn't much time for him to pull his shit together.

“I’d like a shower and breakfast before we leave,” Garrus commented as he pulled himself out of the cooling bed to at least get some clothes on.

Arison nodded briskly.

“Then I’ll see you in the cafeteria,” she offered.

And then she took a few steps to close the distance between them. For the millionth time, he thought about how small she actually was compared to him. And she just hesitated there. Just starting up at him with her ice blue eyes as unreadable as she liked them to be.

“I want to thank you,” she said after a moment.

There were a dozen things she could be thanking him for, and all of them didn't need thanking. He'd done everything that he had so far, because it had been the right thing to do.

“You don’t—”

But apparently, she wasn't in a listening mood, because she cut him off the moment he started talking.

“You’ve stayed. You’ve helped me. I appreciate it.”

She said it quickly, short and chopped up like a someone had shittily spliced together some sound bites. But her fingers brushed up his neck softly. She was still so warm. It was a request, he could tell that much, from the way she was leaning her head forward. Her eyes were closed tight, too. He couldn't ever really say no to her, not about something like this, so Garrus closed the space between them and brought their foreheads together.

Her skin on his felt so right. But she pulled away after just a few seconds, leaving Garrus leaning forward, wishing she could slow down just for once before barreling over every obstacle in her path. At least she was asking for his support, though. She had been vulnerable and asking him to see that with that gesture.

That was a lot more progress than he'd expected.

And then she was walking to the door without saying anything more.

The moment the door slid shut behind her, Garrus let out of a huff of a breath. She was intense. She always had been. And he rarely heard her say that she was thankful for something. At least not like that. Not while admitting weakness. Spirits, being with her was like being in the middle of a windstorm, and it left him breathless. But he loved it.

It took a moment for his brain to reset, though. Because he had things he needed to be thinking about right now that weren't just incoherent musings about Shepard.

Right. Things like getting his guns ready and getting his armor on and getting a shower in less than thirty minutes. Fortunately, the communal bathroom was open, so Garrus hopped in and out and set to work getting his guns up to snuff while drying.

He had his pistol and his rifle. More firepower would have been nice, but it was probably enough, at least if Arison was going to be packing more than her borrowed rifle. They had fighting together down to a science, so getting back into it would just be muscle memory.

Like this whole mess of a plan, though, it all relied on Arison and how well she could handle this.

But what hadn’t she been able to handle before? He just had to trust that she was ready if she said she was. And beyond that, Caitus couldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone again. Ever.

By the time he was actually ready to go, he was running late, so he booked it to the cafeteria where he found Arison sitting at a table next to Marina and Ternian. She wasn’t wearing her dress blues anymore. Instead, she was sitting there like a damn photo op, kitted out in her N7 armor like she'd been born in it. It had to have been salvaged from the Catalyst somehow, because the scuffs and wear and tear on it were the same, other than a few newer marks, as he'd remembered them before she'd charged into the beam.

“You took two?” Marina asked, just loudly enough that Garrus could hear as he got closer.

“I need to be functional, Marina,” Arison bit back. She sounded more defensive than he'd ever heard her, too.

As he grabbed a plate of dextro eggs and toast, he picked up a little more of whatever the argument was about, and he didn’t like what he was hearing.

“I may not be a cardiologist, but I do believe you need a beating heart to be functional.”

“My heart is just fine, thanks for the concern.”

“You’re going to get arrhythmia within an hour. And then, we just have to hope it doesn’t develop into full-blow tachycardia.”

“Hasn’t stopped me before.”

And just as Garrus neared the table, Ternian cut in,

“We have a medic onboard. Not too much human experience, though.”

“Then I’m coming with,” Marina insisted as Garrus sat down.

“No,” Arison demanded.

“It couldn’t hurt. It’s not like we don’t have the space,” Ternian commented.

“Two of what?” Garrus asked as he speared some of the eggs with his fork, pretending to look uninterested.

He knew, though. He knew exactly what Arison had taken, not only because he knew the basics of what different drugs did to her body, but also because he remembered how Arison’s heart would skip beats before and after combat, before the stims reached their half-life.

“A very controlled substance,” Marina ground out, looking at Garrus like he'd been in on this, even if he was on her side about this. If he'd known she was going to do something this risky, he would have tried to stop her, but there wasn't anything they could do about it nor short of pumping her stomach, which he wasn't sure anyone at Havenwood would be willing to try, not when she was like this.

“Nwosu prescribed it,” Arison argued, like that was the end of the conversation. And that was when Marina slapped the table with her hand.

“You are the most stubborn and frustrating patient I’ve ever had—”

“Because your patients are normally five and have temper tantrums instead of—”

“You know she prescribed that for you to wean off, not to overdose—”

So far, he hadn’t seen Marina really lose her temper, but it was fascinating to hear someone talk to Arison like she was just another person, not a war hero or a patient. Arison didn’t seem fazed, though.

“The doctor's coming aboard,” Ternian cut in.

It was an order, actually, and it was received like one, too, because Arison just shut her mouth tightly. Even if no one else could see it, although Marina probably could and just didn't care, Garrus knew she was pissed. Arison taking the order was interesting, though, because as far as he knew, there was the distinct possibility that absolutely no one at this table actually, technically, could be ordered by anyone in the turian military. Arison was... well... any number of things in theory: ex-Alliance, current-Alliance-gone-MIA, or a Spectre depending on whatever the letter of the law said about being declared dead without a body for proof. And Marina was a civilian, and Garrus still hadn’t bothered figured out where he sat, as far as ranks went.

Then, Ternian continued with the plan forcefully, like she hadn’t almost been dead a couple of hours ago.

“Commander Shepard and Garrus will leave on Fahri’s ship for Taetrus. We'll be cloaked behind you. If anything goes spurs down, ping us, and we'll storm the bunker.”

“We won’t need backup. Except maybe for the cleanup,” Arison said sharply.

That wasn't a tone she'd ever used with Anderson or Hackett. And she sounded so confident. But this was just the start of whatever the stims were doing to her body. Out of habit, he pulled up her vitals on his visor. Her heart was already beating too fast, and her breathing wasn't normal, either. But he didn't really need his visor to tell him that the stims were already making their way into her system. And her body wasn't as strong as it used to be.

But it was all up to Arison now. He couldn't do anything more than stand at her side and have her six regardless of how things ended up. He’d cover her if things went bad, and he’d help with the cleanup if they didn’t, but the choices weren't his at this point.

“Let do this,” Arison said, pushing her chair back from the table too hard. It wobbled for a second and almost toppled over. “Let’s get this over with.”

Everyone at the table turned to Garrus, and, as he pulled up the encrypted messaging system from the Hierarchy's server, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you couldn't guess the things I believe from the tone of this story thus far, I'd like to reiterate a few things. Black lives matter. Defund the police. Listen to the minorities around you to find out what you can do to help.


	38. Fear No Evil

_V: I’d like to talk, sir. Do you have an appointment open?_

It needed to be a question, because even a blind person could tell that Caitus wanted respect more than pretty much anything else. Even if by just about any calculation Garrus absolutely outranked him, the whole bullshit conversation would be easier if Caitus got what he wanted. At least at first.

There wasn't a response until after they'd boarded Fahri's ship and taken off.

Fahri’d been excited to see Garrus again, so he’d launched into a running commentary on how well the ship was running, which Garrus really didn’t catch any of. He needed his omnitool to ping with a message, and every dragging second had him more and more on edge.

What if Caitus blew him off? What if Caitus wasn’t available?

“I’ve got some extra credits lying around, I could pay you for—”

“No, keep it,” Garrus said quickly, his eyes still locked onto his omnitool like staring at it could do anything. “Your family needs it more than me.”

Which was true. He wasn’t hurting for credits, since his biggest expenses for the last five years had been rent, food, and alcohol. He hadn’t even checked his account balances in years. He’d just been running on whatever he thought he needed. And Fahri definitely wasn’t in that kind of situation.

Speaking of hurting…

Arison was strapped into the only other seat on the tiny ship, in the back. She had their gear at her feet, and her eyes were locked on the wall across from her. She’d gotten like this sometimes before combat. Just silent and thinking. Getting ready. It didn’t always mean something bad. It didn’t mean she was obsessing or panicking.

Right?

She was tapping the fingers on her left hand against her leg, trying to do it so Garrus couldn’t see.

It could’ve just been the stims. She’d probably taken them way too early, at least if whatever Nwosu’d given her was anything like the stims she’d used to take. She’d just needed to force herself to get going, even if it might’ve meant crashing early.

Or these were different kinds of stims. Slow release or something.

Sometimes Arison was just quiet and sometimes she just had anxious ticks. It didn’t mean she was going to break the moment she saw Caitus.

He wanted to ask her if she was okay. But even if they’d been alone, she’d have been pissed at him for asking. And she definitely wasn’t going to say anything in front of someone who idealized hero. Like Fahri.

And there still wasn’t a message ping.

So every damn second felt like a lifetime. With that exact same thoughts just repeating like some glitched VI.

This wasn’t anything like dropping into a warzone. That was a pure adrenaline rush. Gritted teeth and a pounding heart. But it’d always felt good. Every team that went down with Arison was champing at the bit to touch down. And right now? Garrus’s jaw was locked shut, but it wasn’t because they were seconds from boots on the ground.

This was different. This wasn’t some clear-cut job where Arison’d be behind them, calling shots and stealing half his kills, because the modding she’d done to that rifle made it as unique and terrifying as she was. This was half-infiltration, which Garrus wasn’t normally taken out for, and half-take-no-prisoners-raid. That last bit would have been easy on its own, they’d done that a dozen times before.

But that had all been with Cerberus soldiers or whatever the Reapers cooked up. Not turians. Not on turian soil. Not with Arison toeing the line of breaking straight in half.

There wasn’t anything he could do, though. This was all on Arison. Either she broke or she didn’t, and he couldn’t do anything other than just be there and hope that was enough to keep her together.

It was easier, too, when they actually had a real objective. Either they achieved it or they didn’t. Pass or fail. But this was all on Arison. He didn’t know what she had planned, and maybe she didn’t either. The closest thing to a real objective they had was making sure Caitus never hurt anyone again. And if Arison got that far, there were a million ways to get that done.

She’d be the one calling the shots, like always.

One bullet could do the job. It’d mean that Caitus couldn’t try to defend himself. It’d just be getting rid of evil, clean and simple.

And Arison normally operated like that. If she was going to kill someone, it’d always been one shot. No empty an entire heat-sink’s worth of shots into a corpse or anything. Clean and simple was what she liked. But this was different than even when Udina’d betrayed her. She’d seen that as political, not personal. And she’d shot him to keep Ash from doing anything really stupid.

And she wasn’t acting on orders now, either. She was a free agent for the first time in her whole life.

She’d never made a bad call before. So why was he so worried now? She’d kept her cool when anyone else would have broken down and given a dumb order. She’d given orders, he’d followed, and they’d both made it through impossible odds. She said, “Jump,” and he asked, “How high?” so why question her now?

The second the ping sounded, Garrus opened the message on reflex so quickly he almost clicked the wrong buttons.

_O: I wondered how long it would take for you to get into contact with me._

Caitus was a smug bastard. It was like he thought he'd planned all of this. He thought he was some brilliant mastermind, when all he was was a bit-rate coward.

And Garrus knew what he needed to write back, he just hated it.

_V: I want to understand._

It had his blood boiling, but this was just an act. When Arison had gone undercover, she’d slipped into her roles like an award-winning vid actor. This wasn’t any different from that. And, fuck, it was harder than he would’ve guessed. Arison had always made it look so damn easy.

_O: You're a smart man, Garrus. Surely, you already understand._

_V: I want to understand better._

_O: I’m sure you would._

The next message from Caitus was a set of coordinates. On Taetrus.

How the hell was he supposed to sit in a room with this fucker and pretend like he cared to listen, when even just reading what he was saying was so infuriating it had him seeing red.

Apparently, Arison could tell something was wrong, because he heard her unbuckling from her seat in the back.

_V: I'm not looking for trouble. Everyone else who knows is dead._

_O: I have no idea what you're talking about. Meet me at 1500. It's time we talked._

And that was all Garrus could stomach. He closed the messages on his omnitool just before Arison appeared over his shoulder. She didn't need to read that. Spirits, he wished he hadn't had to write any of it.

“What's wrong?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder gently, like he was the one Caitus had tortured all those years ago.

“Just setting up the meeting point,” he said, trying not to sound nearly as pissed as he actually was. Arison was an actor, she’d proven that a million times over. And apparently Garrus wasn’t that good, because she asked,

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” he insisted.

But this was more than he could handle on top of Caitus’ bullshit.

She always did this. Instead of dealing with her own shit, she tried to help other people. It was coping, sure, but it was the most self-destructive coping she could manage while still being someone people would respect. No one else saw it. They just thought she was Commander Shepard, some sort of hero or god or something. But once you knew her, it was so easy to see.

Why did no one else ever see it?

“Don't get yourselves hurt now,” Fahri ordered, buying into Arison’s act like everyone else always did, “There aren't many people like you in the galaxy, so we can't afford to be losing you.”

“I'll keep him in line,” Arison promised.

And then she slid her hand down his shoulder to his arm.

It was the most intimate thing she’d ever done in public with him sober. And he could barely feel it through the civvies, since her touch was so light. Because this was an act for Farhi. To keep him from worrying. Maybe it was supposed to be an act for Garrus, too, but she should’ve known it wouldn’t work on him. He knew her better than anyone else. 

“You know, my wife was Alliance. She retired when she was about your age.”

“I am retired, Fahri,” Arison insisted, which had Garrus letting out a cut-off scoff.

As if she could ever retire. She hadn't even retired when she was dead.

And apparently the whole big act was an outlet for her energy, because she started bantering with Fahri like her life depended on it. Still with one hand barely touching Garrus’ arm. And even though he’d felt like he was supposed to, he couldn’t make himself chip in. Even when Arison was leaving room for him to. He wasn’t Arison. He wasn’t an actor. He needed to save his energy for Caitus.

It felt like it took forever, but eventually Arison slid her hand back up his arm, across his shoulder, gently settling on his scarred mandible. And he let out a punched breath.

That wasn’t just part of her act.

It could be the last time she touched him.

And then she silently went back to her seat, like the infiltrator she was, and he only knew where she’d gone when the buckle clicked.

The flight took eight hours miserable hours.

“Good luck,” Fahri insisted once he’d opened the door to the landing pad.

“Thank you,” Arison said softly before engaging her stealth shields, which she'd apparently given some serious upgrades to, since he couldn't even see the air wavering around her anymore.

She was completely invisible. And she’d told him the shield would last as long as she wanted, as long as no one fired anything at her. She’d put some serious work into the tech, but he really couldn’t be impressed by it right now. 

And Spirits, he hoped that there wasn’t going to be gunfire. Unless it was Arison blowing Caitus' head off.

Arison was gone. Silent and invisible. It was all up to him now.

It took a couple of seconds to get himself to unstrap and even step foot off the ship.

Taetrus was exactly like he’d left it weeks ago. He even sort of half-expected to see Ternian there, dressed in her uniform like she had been when he'd first gotten onto a landing pad on Taetrus.

But the landing pad was empty except for a few merchant ships dropping off Hierarchy cargo, because there wasn't exactly a booming private industry on a planet that didn't even have the infrastructure to be recolonized yet.

And as much as he wanted to, Garrus knew better than to look behind him for Arison. They'd done this song and dance a million times now, with her cloaked, waiting to strike. And looking back would betray that he wasn't alone if he was being watched.

The coordinates on his omnitool had him going south.

No one glanced at him, not even once he started heading into a construction zone. There was some nicer pre-fab buildings going up, and some of them even looked lived in. Probably by everyone who'd followed Adrien to the capital, because of course they'd get nicer places than any of the people working to rebuild the planet.

At the end of the block, though, there was a huge building. Probably for offices. It was tall, too, but not even half its windows were put in yet. It looked like it would be a damn nightmare to have a firefight in, too. Which was probably exactly what Caitus had been thinking when he made this their meeting spot.

There wasn't even a front door on the place, yet.

Garrus checked the coordinates one last time, even though he knew this was the right location. It was just wishful thinking that he was wrong, because this place was a tactical nightmare. But then again, what had he even expected? What part of Caitus' bullshit hadn't been a damn nightmare so far?

There was no one else in the street, but that didn't mean there weren't people on the rooftops. But Garrus wasn’t getting any obvious visuals on any snipers, and he wasn't getting any concerning readings on his visor about radiation or gas, so he took a deep breath and took a few more steps toward the open doorframe.

It was dark inside. He could tell that much. No one had done any wiring yet, or if they had, Caitus wasn't caring to use it. Of course, he wanted to make things difficult and dramatic, the fucking bastard.

So he took a long, deep breath before walking over the threshold and into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't update last week, because I was celebrating my birthday. Thank you so much for hanging in there. I've actually almost finished writing this story! I'm on chapter 41 as of today, and that's a total of more than 100k words! I'm also posting a day early, since I may be too busy to post tomorrow.


	39. Red Right Hand

There wasn’t much to see at first, just a lot of different shadows, because his eyes were still adjusting. But what his eyes couldn’t get yet, his visor was having no problem picking up. The UV system gave him a clear readout of an empty room with two turians about fifteen feet away. They had rifles, but it didn’t look like there were any traps off the bat.

But the visor wasn’t just there for visuals. He’d turned off the recorder function ages ago.

Arison wouldn’t want this to exist.

But evidence was evidence. And depending on how this turned out…

“I have a meeting with the colonel,” Garrus offered as gruffly as he could as his eyes began to make out more on their own. And he turned on the recording function for the first time in… a long time.

The turians were young. Not kids, but barely adults, and they were in uniform.

Ternian had refused to bring her in own people, and here Caitus was making everyone he could into an accomplice, even if they were too young to know who they’d really thrown in with. And by the time they did, they wouldn’t be able to leave, because they’d participated in something that could ruin their career.

Garrus had seen it all before on Omega.

And as much as he wanted to tell these second lieutenants to just leave, he knew it wouldn’t matter. And besides… He couldn’t raise any alarms yet. Not until… Well… Arison chose whatever the hell she was going to do.

“You’re Advisor Vakarian, then?” the one on the left asked, but it sounded like she already knew her answer.

What was worse? That this soldier was a kid or that Caitus clearly didn’t have any respect for women of any species, so this second-lieutenant who probably hadn’t even fought the Reapers had fought tooth and talon to get where she was, just to get close to someone who would never listen to her. Caitus was willing to try to kill a war hero general. He’d hurt this kid given any reason.

But Garrus wasn’t here for her.

“Yes. Colonel Oremnion gave me these coordinates. I’m assuming this is the right place.”

It all sounded so confident and haughty, and apparently that was exactly what the guards needed to hear, because the first turian gave a sharp nod.

“Come with us, Advisor,” the second turian offered.

He looked a lot more impressed with meeting a war hero than his compatriot was, but then again, if she’d walked into this with something to prove, she couldn’t afford to feel anything.

No.

He could worry about other people later. He needed to get to Caitus without raising any suspicions, so he couldn’t worry about why the fresh recruits were in the positions they were. With Caitus dead, they could square everything away. So he just needed to hold out. And if Omega had taught him anything, it was that he could hold out like a damn pro.

There was a ply-board hallway behind them, leading deeper into the unlit building, and the soldiers fell into step behind Garrus as he took his first confident steps into the bowels of this massive building. It smelled like construction, like the Citadel had for years, even with all the air filtering.

This air didn’t smell recycled, though, even if it was dusty.

It was quiet, and there was dust just hanging in the air.

Ash at some point had talked about a type of storm on Earth where, in the middle of it, everything just stopped. It had something to do with wind patterns or air pressure or something. He hadn’t thought much of it before, just that it seemed unbelievable like most things on Earth did. Now, though, he understood sort of.

The man who had started all of this was waiting. And even the dust in the air wasn’t moving. 

The eye. That was what Ash had called it. The eye of the storm.

There was a closed door near the end of the hallway, the only door actually on its hinges that Garrus had seen so far. He stopped and waited for the soldiers to do whatever they were ordered to do.

After another nod to Garrus, the second soldier knocked on the door.

The nod wasn’t giving him permission or anything. It was like a nod a buddy gave the other before debriefing a CO. And Garrus found himself nodding back. He’d been young and dumb once. And back when he’d been so desperate for a way to mean something, he probably could have ended up following a man like Caitus. Shepard had seemed so ruthless and cold when Garrus had first met her, and he’d still thrown in with her without even hesitating for a second.

And once the soldier opened the door, Garrus had to stop himself from looking over his shoulder down the dark hallway. He hadn’t seen Arison, or heard her, but he never did, not when she was under her shields.

She needed to get in, and this was her best bet to get in undetected.

The door swung open wide into a makeshift office. Even if the walls weren’t finished and the windows weren’t even put in yet, there was a desk and a set of nice chairs. And a small table that held a bottle of liquor on it with two glasses.

And there Caitus was, behind the desk, dressed in his colonel’s uniform, even if he had been retired from the military for years. He had all of his patches and medals perfectly aligned and spaced. And his white clan markings tracked across his face cleanly.

He didn’t look like anything special, just another older turian who’d seen some combat, but he’d burned himself into Arison’s memory so well that even when she was so sure she’d forgotten everything, just seeing his face thirty years later had brought it all back.

He didn’t look like anything special, but he’d made sure that Arison remembered him.

Garrus couldn’t get angry. He needed Caitus to think he was here to just talk. And Arison needed to get into the room.

All he had to do was act respectful and waste time. He could do that.

Garrus stepped so he was just outside the doorframe and snapped to a tight salute. If Arison was quick, she could use the foot or so on either side of the door to sneak in.

“Sir,” Garrus addressed respectfully, clearly asking permission to enter the room.

The last time he’d used a tone like that had been with Adrien years ago. And before that… Well, it had been mostly reserved for Shepard in the first year or so they’d known each other.

“Permission to enter,” Caitus granted.

How many times had Arison had to hear that tone of voice? Rigid. Unfeeling.

No. He couldn’t think about that. Not now.

No, right now he needed to be a character. And not like how he was Archangel. He needed to be the exact opposite of Archangel. He needed to forget about Arison and how much he loved her and how much he wanted justice. No. He needed to be someone who wanted to get close to Caitus. Someone power hungry. Someone who didn’t give a fuck who they hurt as long as it meant getting what they wanted.

Someone Garrus could have been if he’d been desperate for approval from the wrong person.

“Please, sit,” Caitus said, reaching a hand out to the chair closest to the door.

And that little exchange had definitely bought enough time for Arison to get in before the door was closed, so Garrus walked over as one of the soldiers shut the door behind him.

He needed to be someone who could sympathize with Caitus.

“You’re an interesting man, Garrus,” Caitus started to muse as he walked over to the small table and poured out two glasses of whatever liquor was in the bottle.

What would he have said if Shepard had told him that after he’d given her his whole monologue about how he wanted to investigate Saren? As a dumb kid C-Sec agent… It would have gone straight to his head. And from her, probably straight to some other places, too.

“I’m flattered you think so. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Your reputation proceeds you.”

Only two parts of that were a lie, but they all sounded sincere, because all he had to do was imagine himself if he’d followed the wrong path, and then the act wasn’t much of an act anymore.

If Shepard had asked him to cover something up, he would have. Actually, he had, even if she’d never asked. He’d covered up her stim abuse, even once she’d died. He’d found all of the pills and handed them over to Jack to do whatever the hell she wanted with. So the act wasn’t that far from who he was, was it? 

“My belated commendations on being placed on Adrien’s personal advisory board. Spirits know he needs good men there.”

“Thank you,” Garrus said as Caitus handed him one of the glasses and then sat down in the other chair. Getting placed on the advisory board seemed like nothing compared to saving the galaxy, but it was really was something to be proud of, wasn’t it? Even if Garrus hadn’t thought much of it, because he hadn’t been thinking about much of anything at the time, his father’d been proud of it. It’d felt like maybe for the first time ever, his father didn’t think he was a failure.

“This is Palaven grown and fermented,” Caitus commended holding his glass out and looking at it intently.

It wasn’t the normal neon drinks that bars served up. It hardly even looked dextro, actually. It was more black than brown, and it shined like gun oil. But it smelled good despite the fact that someone could’ve convinced him it was refined tar or something by the looks of it. It smelled like something he could almost remember. Something on the Normandy.

Caitus took a sip and then watched, waiting for Garrus to follow suit, because you didn’t drink before your CO. Respect. He was making out like he respected Caitus.

So Garrus raised the glass and took a small sip. It was definitely strong, that was pretty much the only thing he could say for sure about it after the first taste. It was heady shit, but that was the sort of thing generals drank socially. Usually with ice, but this was Taetrus, and they were in the middle of a barely standing building, so ice wasn’t probably a real consideration.

The second sip, though, that was better. It left a thick feeling in this throat and had a sweet after-taste, like some dextro-amaretto he’d had at some party. He’d been told the levo version was better, so he hadn’t felt bad swapping it out for something else after a few sips.

This wasn’t bad, though. Not nearly as sweet, which was what made it more than passable. At least he wouldn’t have to pretend to like the drink, and hopefully after half the glass, the conversation would be easier to deal with, too.

“What do you think?” Caitus asked, and it sounded like he genuinely wanted an answer. But there was more to it. He wasn’t just asking about the drink, really. That didn’t take a genius to catch.

“It’s… got a complex palate.”

Garrus didn’t exactly know what the meant, but he’d heard Miranda say it before, and that had always seemed to be a winner of a comment when she’d said it. And Caitus wasn’t the only one who could use double-meanings.

“Palaven has always produced the extraordinary.”

And Caitus left it at that, just waiting for a response. And even if it wasn’t about the alcohol, it was meant to be another compliment. Even if Caitus was from Palaven, too, if Garrus remembered right, so it wasn’t a selfless accolade.

“It has,” Garrus said, this time just agreeing to agree. Garrus could have meant it if that had been the statement on its own, that Palaven made some good things. Because it did. But Caitus was saying it like Palaven only made great things. Like producing some great product or some great people once a century made it better than anywhere else, even when it produced more shit than it ever did anything passable. 

“You’re a smart man, Garrus,” Caitus appraised with his sharp grey eyes narrowed in. “You’re a good soldier and a good turian. So what have you come here to talk about?”

“I’m here to understand, Colonel—”

Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? He was here to understand how someone could do the things he did. He was here to understand what had happened. And really, when it came down to it? He was here to understand Arison.

No. This wasn’t the time to think about her. He couldn’t afford to, not in front of Caitus. Because then he’d starting thinking about how small and vulnerable she was against a turian, even as an adult. And then he’d start thinking about how small she must have been compared to Caitus, or how massive the scars his talons must have left—

No.

“I’m not here to judge, not like others. I just want to understand. I want to know the truth.”

“Oh?”

“Permission to state some information I've been given, sir?”

“You don’t need to ask for permission, Garrus. You’re an equal here.”

Caitus’s subvocals were humming with respect, but with something more, too… Something like pride. It felt wrong, coming from Caitus.

But some part of him still instinctively responded to it.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. And he didn’t mean to. But he meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the descent into darkness, friends. Hang in there. I'm almost done writing the climax, and hoo boy does it hurt real good.


	40. H+L+S

The words came out automatically. It was completely mechanical. Like he was reading from a briefing transcription. He was just saying some words after some words. Like they weren’t Caitus’ horrific legacy of terror, just some words. They needed to just be words.

He couldn’t afford to feel anything now.

“There are three kids dead in a facility in Arcturus.”

Just words—

But he’d been in the room right next to it, the one where Nwosu’d died. And he’d never actually seen the room where the kids had been killed. He hadn’t actually gone inside. Maybe he should have… before he faced the man who’d had them killed—

And Caitus seemed so calm. He was just listening and sipping his drink. Just listening to words.

“The raiders got a payment from an account under your name.”

Arison was in the room somewhere. Waiting. She’d traced that account. That was how she’d seen his face again.

Arison.

“There’s a human who claims you assaulted her, sir. And there are several accounts of similar incidents committed by a turian matching your description.”

These were the sort of things he’d listed off as charges before an arrest as a C-Sec officer, so they were just falling out of him now, even if he couldn’t get a single thought straight. His brain was racing and going nowhere at the same time. A list of charges, but the words didn’t mean anything, because just saying them couldn’t possibly show how fucked up everything was.

And Caitus was just sitting there. Not even moving, just staring. His grey eyes not moving an inch.

And this was an act. Just an act. He needed to buy time for Arison.

“Please understand, sir, I’m not here to make accusations, like others might. I just want to know—”

“The truth?” Caitus ventured, his tone low. Dangerously low.

Garrus found himself giving a terse nod. He wanted to look away. Look literally anywhere else. Because the longer he was sitting here, the more normal Caitus seemed, even if Garrus already knew the truth. Caitus was like any other member of the old guard, like any good turian.

“Yes, sir. The truth,” Garrus agreed.

Caitus’ subvocals purred with approval and Garrus caught himself leaning forward in his chair at the sound. In turian culture, that noise was a nonverbal compliment. It wasn’t something given out lightly, either. Or in public normally. It was a sound only a turian could make, and responding to it was just instinct. 

It felt good.

When was the last time he’d ever heard that? He couldn’t remember his father even using that subvocal.

It felt good, even if it shouldn’t have. Not coming from who it was coming from.

“You’re not like the others, Garrus,” Caitus stated slowly, leaning forward, too. “You care about reality. About truth. Most people are cowards. And the truth… Well, the truth is such a difficult thing, wouldn’t you say?”

Before Shepard, everything had been black and white, he’d told her that. And she saw the grey, and she’d dragged him straight into it, and, fuck, had that made everything that much harder. Life was easier when there was just right and wrong. Then he could plunge himself into doing the right thing even if it cost him his job. Or whatever shitty relationship he’d had with his father. Or his health. Or almost his life.

But no.

Nwosu had written it all out. He’d seen the words, black on white paper. Even if there wasn’t any DNA evidence, Arison’d known it was him. Everything pointed to Caitus. Even if he seemed like every other turian politician Garrus had ever met.

Even if there was grey, that didn’t mean that black and white stopped existing.

And he wanted to hear that subvocal from Caitus again.

Fuck.

This was how men like him operated, Garrus had seen that time and time again. He made you think he was normal. He got you to agree with him, until at some point you realized that you couldn’t stop agreeing.

He wanted to book it out of the room.

He wasn’t a coward. But this was too much. Now, Caitus was trying to drag Garrus down, too.

And Arison still hadn’t made her fucking move. When was she going to do it? Whatever the hell_ it_ was.

“You’re alive today, because you are a smart man. Where some people jump to conclusions, you consider. I had heard some people speak of your difficulties following orders, at least in your youth, but clearly, they didn’t know you. True intelligence is rare, Garrus. And few appreciate it.”

When he’d tried to tell everyone about Saren, he’d been told to sit down and shut up.

But no. Caitus didn’t know him. They were nothing alike. The compliments didn’t mean anything.

And Arison had listened. Commander Shepard had heard him out and taken him on board, even when she thought he was just a naïve kid, and she’d been right.

“Sir…”

What was he even saying? He wanted to tell Caitus to shut up, because it felt like Caitus was flaying him open and complimenting what he saw inside. And Garrus couldn’t help that he was hardwired to take those subvocals the way he had. He couldn’t help needing approval. Caitus knew it. And as much as every cell in his body wanted out of the room, Garrus couldn’t move.

It was up to Arison. It always had been.

“You want to know the truth, Garrus. Patience. Do you know of the concept of subjectivity?”

Yeah, the idea was that reality was different for each person. Everyone saw the world differently, so there couldn’t be an objective truth. He wasn’t a philosopher, but he’d heard people talk about it. Mostly as an excuse to hurt other people.

But he’d considered it. Considered that he only saw the world through one lens, and everyone else saw things differently. That didn’t mean they weren’t culpable for shit they did, though, even if it was true.

“I’m familiar, sir.”

“You’re a smart man. The very topic is fascinating, which is why I’m sure it captured your attention. Objectivity cannot simply exist. Facts themselves are tainted by past experiences. Even computers are biased, because they run on code created by biased individuals. So, the truth clearly must be multifaceted. I find it easiest to think of individual experiences as a fifth dimension in the world of understanding. And I know you’ve heard stories. Do you believe them?”

He couldn’t lie. Not about that.

Every reaction Arison had ever had… It made sense. She couldn’t make up how she flinched when he’d touched her wrong or how she’d known exactly how to handle a turian body when they’d first started things all those years ago.

“Yes, sir.”

“But?”

“But there are pieces missing, and I want to understand.”

“You think I had those children killed.”

“And General Ternian.”

Suddenly, Caitus’ façade broke.

And he was smug as all hell.

Ternian had been on that hospital bed, coughing out her blood. He’d seen the blue tracking down out of her eyes. His heart was racing, because he was back on Havenwood. Thinking Ternian was going to die. Still coming down from thinking he was about to commit treason and kill turian soldiers to protect Arison and Marina and—

“Aurelia wasn’t ever the most inquiring mind. She launched one successful defense, and suddenly she believed she was the Primarch herself,” Caitus dismissed, but then he paused. “But her experiences led her to see facts in a different light. She was always more likely to pick a losing side out of some misguided sense of justice. Which I suppose is admirable in its own right. Don’t misunderstand me. I respected her, but she was about to make choices that could not be unmade.”

“Like telling people about the things I’ve heard.”

“But you knew better than to do that, Garrus. Sometimes, age truly is just a number. You are so young to have come so far, and thanks to you, we live in the world we do today. The entire galaxy owes you their thanks. That is more than Aurelia could ever have dreamed of laying claim to. The survival of Palaven was a stroke of luck, not anything she did or didn’t cause. Would you like more?”

Garrus blinked and realized that his glass was empty. Had been empty for a while.

What was Arison seeing? Was she seeing her partner just sitting and having drinks with her rapist? Did she think that Caitus was right? That they were the same? What about them was all that different?

It’d been so easy to hate him when he couldn’t see him. And now that he was sitting across from just another turian, he couldn’t keep things straight. Caitus was a monster who raped and killed children. Caitus was sitting in front of him, holding out more liquor, complimenting everything Garrus had ever felt like he’d fucked up.

“Garrus, are you alright?”

“I’m just thinking, sir,” Garrus said slowly.

Caitus reached over and poured more into Garrus’ glass before topping off his own.

“Take your time. There are a lot of different views you’ve been exposed to, and I trust you to reach the right conclusion.”

“That you’re innocent?”

“What is innocence, Garrus?”

It was what Arison had been before she’d been kidnapped and sold and tortured and mutilated and forced into addiction and—

“Humans say it’s bliss,” Caitus finished with his version of a grin as his mandibles flared.

“Ignorance,” Garrus corrected out of habit.

He’d heard that a million and a half times. Either as a joke from Vega or Ash or Miranda or from Arison as she ground it out from between gritted teeth every time someone tried to say the Reapers weren’t real.

“You’ve been quite taken with humans, haven’t you, Garrus? The human Alliance gave you some sort of medal, didn’t they, for your role in everything?”

Spirits, Garrus had repressed that day pretty damn well until Caitus’ words started rewiring things in his brain.

It’d been sunny. On Earth. They’d buried Arison’s pretty much empty casket a week before, and it’d been a massive thing with humans everywhere. Maybe it should have been on Mindoir. And then he was in line with the rest of the Normandy crew, next to Tali, watching as some general went down the line, pinning medals on everyone’s chest and thanking them for their bravery and then Ash had been given the Normandy. And she’d let Garrus clear out Arison’s stuff. There hadn’t been much. Arison wasn’t a sentimental person. There were a lot of weapons mods, and he’d kept those, still had them somewhere, but the whole time it’d been dead quiet. Just his talons tapping against small thing after small thing as he tried to figure out what to do with what was left of the woman he loved, his medal catching the light too often to remind him that he’d made it out a hero, and she’d probably burned to death screaming for the sake of a universe which hadn’t given much of a shit about her until she’d started sacrificing herself for them one step at a time.

“Yes, sir,” was all Garrus could say, because he’d felt like his world had ended that day, and he could still feel it half a decade later, even if he knew that Arison was somewhere nearby. Alive and kicking and mad as hell. He still could feel how his heart’d felt like it’d been ripped straight out of his chest. And all of those nights where he’d just thought about how nice it’d be to just not wake up in the morning.

“You’re a brave man, Garrus, trusting humans. When no turian listened to you, the humans did, I understand that. But know that humans are very different from turians. How much do you know about the Relay 314 Incident?”

Incident or War? It was all about who you asked. The humans thought they were under attack. Turians thought they were bringing peace. It wasn’t ancient history, of course he knew about it.

“We were doing our jobs. We were keeping the peace, and the humans reacted like feral animals. They didn’t once consider anything beyond themselves. I lost good soldiers. And they died in numbers for their thoughtless violence. They’re like animals, Garrus, useful when kept, but dangerous when unleashed. Why do you think it was a human who had the highest kill count in the Reaper War? Because violence is their nature, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their uses.”

Arison had killed thousands. Husks or geth or Cerberus. Anyone who’d stood between her and her goals.

Not allies, though. She wasn’t a monster.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Garrus?”

The glass was empty again. When had he even drank that? Why was everything so messy. This was black and white, open and close, shut and done. Justice needed to be served. Caitus was a monster. Even if he knew what to say. Even if it wasn’t black and white to him. Even if he was making it all grey.

Damn Shepard for showing him a world of grey.

“I'd like another drink, sir.”


	41. Death of Innocence

Caitus looked… Well… Smug. Smug as all hell. About Ternian. And then he was filling the glass back up.

But there was something else about him.

Something was off, but what was it?

And why was Arison waiting so long? Was she even there? Had she just left him? Had she panicked? Had Arison left him again?

The last time she’d left him, he’d wanted to die. He couldn’t do that again.

“Garrus, I’d like to ask you a candid question.”

What was wrong with Caitus? He looked different. Something was off.

He was…

“Of course, sir.”

Fuzzy?

He was fuzzy around the edges, and everything felt so slow. The air felt heavy, didn’t it? Not like humid heavy. Hard to breathe heavy. Taetrus had O2 levels similar to Palaven’s. 

He was supposed to be sober. Sober and stalling for time. And that red light was still blinking slowly in the corner of his visor display. Because this was an undercover sting, and he was gathering evidence.

“You understand me, don’t you?”

Understood what he was saying. Yeah, he wasn’t that drunk. He was just woozy. How long had it been since he’d actually had good sleep? Days? A week? Time had stopped meaning much of anything. He’d just been panicking and running from emotional whiplash to emotional whiplash.

“Yes, sir.”

He wasn’t that drunk.

“You have a bright future head of you on Palaven, Garrus. The Hierarchy is being run into the ground by less inquiring minds. Adrien values your opinion and for good reason. You are a rallying figure, Garrus. You could bring Palaven back to glory. We’re cut from the same cloth, you and I.”

“Are we?”

He’d always been a bad turian.

Couldn’t take orders. Didn’t make his family proud. Didn’t really care about his position in the Hierarchy. Didn’t think turians were better than any other race. They were all fucked up in their own ways, and he’d known that even before he’d heard what happened to Arison. Even before the war. Even before he worked with his father at C-Sec.

But he wasn’t a bad person. Right? He wasn’t. He cared about other people. Arison had said he was a good person. And she wasn’t wrong about people.

So he was a bad turian. And Caitus?

He was a good turian and a bad person… Right?

It was so hard to think. He hadn’t been this dunk since… Well, he’d gotten this drunk a lot in the last few years. Because Arison had left him. Let him suffer. She was always fair. Just. And she wasn’t wrong about people. Ever. He wouldn’t have listened to her if she’d asked him to let her recover on her own. She wasn’t wrong about people, so she’d left him to suffer “I believe we share some experiences.”

Caitus sat back in his chair. Maybe. Probably. He was so blurry. Maybe he hadn’t moved at all? Maybe it wasn’t even Caitus in that chair at all.

But his voice. No, his voice was the same. It was Caitus.

Shared some experiences.

What? Fighting? Being born with claws that tore things up and teeth that broke hide?

“The woman who sent you here.”

No.

No. He couldn’t hear this. The words on paper… They’d been too much. He hadn’t wanted to read them then. When they were just words. Arison wanted him to understand her. She wanted him to read it. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to hear this.

“We both knew her at her weakest, don’t we?”

No.

She wasn’t weak. Strong. She fought until she couldn’t fight anymore.

“She’s grown since I had last seen her.”

She’d been a kid. Eight years old. Kidnapped in a soccer jersey. With her hair up. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to know what Caitus had done to that little girl.

He did know what Caitus’d done. Rape. Four letters. He knew what that meant. Didn’t mean he wanted the images of it in his head. Cognitively knowing. That was enough. That was all he could manage.

“She’s dead,” Garrus managed to grit out.

Caitus knew the truth, but that didn’t matter. The world couldn’t know.

She didn’t even have much of her own skin left. Probably on an immunosuppressant. Maybe that was one of the thousands of pills on top of her desk. Hadn’t thought of that before. Should’ve been more careful taking her off Havenwood.

“I didn’t recognize her at first, when I saw the feeds of Commander Shepard. But she really hadn’t changed. Not a bit.”

Shared experiences.

Arison's blood in his mouth. How warm she was when she was pressed up against him. How wet she could get for him. How she liked to be hauled up.

She was small next to a turian.

She’d been even smaller with Caitus—

“It doesn't surprise me that she chose a turian in the end,” Caitus said slowly. “She seemed to get a taste for... Well...”

Very specific set of responses.

“Does she still like to come with your teeth in her?”

The glass was empty in Garrus' hand. He was holding it so hard it should have broken. Why wasn’t it breaking?

“Oh, don’t be jealous, Garrus. If anything, you can be thankful. By the end, she had developed quite the skillset. Don’t tell me she lost those. That would be a tragedy for you.”

“Why?”

Arison was waiting. For a why? Why? 

“She's magnetic, isn't she? Even the Primarch wanted her. We've shared something even the leader of Palaven hasn't had. And I muzzled her first. Consider it a gift.”

It. Gift.

“Kid,” Garrus insisted.

“She was old enough.”

No consent law that young. Couldn’t even have consented. Definition of slavery and power imbal… impal… imbalance.

“Old enough to enjoy it, Garrus. Don’t tell me she said otherwise. You’re a smart man. You've seen how much she enjoys bleeding.”

Been a kid. Been scared. Her family murdered. Mom killed in front of her. Torn up from the inside out. She’d probably never seen a turian before Caitus. Must have seen his teeth and talons. A monster. Been that scared kid hiding. Handcuffed to a bed. Found by accident.

“Hurt her,” Garrus accused.

“I’ve made her orgasm from pain alone. Have you tried it? It’s not something many other humans are capable of. And I know she must have begged for you to bite her. She always liked that part.”

Teeth.

Tear out the teeth. Used medigel before. She wanted good scars. Good scars?

“Humans were a rarity, back then, so early into their space travel. I paid good credits to find a human. And she did not disappoint. They’re animals. But leashed? She learned so many tricks. But I’m sure you’re well aware of how much she can fit inside of her. Inside of any part of her.”

No.

Couldn’t imagine it.

Could imagine it. Turian talons. His talons. Into her stomach as he pushed inside of her. Arison’s moans. She’d have been so much smaller. Could have torn her to pieces if he wanted.

Did tear her to pieces.

Didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t want to think this.

Hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t wanted to be Caitus.

“No,” someone begged. Sounded like him, but he didn't remember opening his mouth. Opening mouth. Teeth.

Arison had wanted him. She’d said love. Loved him.

Caitus made her say that too?

Arison.

Haven… Haven… Facility. Med. Arcturus.

“You knew. Alive.”

“I knew that she was alive? Garrus, there is a very simple answer to the question you’re asking. Why do you think I did any of this?”

Why? Last Question.

Hard to breathe?

Last puzzle piece. Right here. 

Tired?

“I'm a simple man with simple desires, Garrus. All I wanted was to see our dear Commander again. I want to see the woman I made.”

Hard to breathe… Caitus not looking? Caitus looking away? At what?

Arison?

Dark. Cold on Taetrus. Shouldn’t be.

“Convince me, Commander. Convince me to keep your secret.”


	42. Object v Subject

I'd asked why a thousand times.

I’d asked it as a kid, curled up in my own blood, crying out precious water when I knew more wouldn’t come until the morning rations bar. Because I’d hurt. Every inch, inside and out. I’d wished I was dead, like Pops. Like Mom. Like Ellie.

I’d asked it on Akuze, too. Covered in blood that wasn’t even mostly mine, next to the pieces of my squad members. I’d woken up next to a hand. Not a person. Just a hand. And the fingers had been all curled in on each other.

And when I woke up with Miranda talking me out of death like some niche British VI.

And when Nwosu’d pumped me full of someone else’s blood and told me I wasn’t going to die. Not on her operating table.

I’d asked it a lot, and there’d never been an answer.

Why? Maybe it was like Ash said. There was a god somewhere. She thought he had two sides, Old and New. And the Old one was the judgement, and the New one was peace and love or whatever. It’d sounded like a nice thing to believe in.

But as for why? Maybe there was a god, and he just liked suffering.

I’d been made to like it after all, so maybe someone had made God like suffering just as much.

Caitus hadn’t been lying or bragging. I’d come from just pain before. He’d come into my cell with sharpened talons, and even from the first step he’d taken in, I’d known it was going to be different from the usual. I’d bleed just as much, sure. He liked it. Sometimes he accidentally left his translator on. Red. Something about the color red. He’d told me if I could come, he’d stop cutting me open.

Mom always said the brain was a powerful thing.

Like Nwosu kept saying all my pain was psychosomatic. But I wasn’t making it up. Everything hurts. Everything had always hurt.

And I liked to say I was a woman of action. I did what needed to be done. I didn’t hesitate. If I’d backed out every time something might have hurt me, the galaxy would be wiped to dust with only Liara’s little message boxes out there to sit around in the hopes that in the future, some society might be able to fight back and unite under the memory of some long-dead Commander Shepard.

But I’d done it. I’d suffered and died for my cause.

And I acted. I chose.

And his words had me frozen.

It was like I was a fucking kid again, staring in horror at the first turian I’d ever seen. Knowing what he’d do to me, because it wasn’t like he was the first person to pay to get into my cell. But before that, it’d been asari. A salarian or two. Lots of batarians. They’d been more or less something humanoid.

And he’d been a fucking monster from a nightmare.

And I wasn’t blind.

Garrus had been slouching over more and more, and it wasn’t just the alcohol. He wasn’t a lightweight, even if I could drink him under the table. There’d been something in that alcohol, because this had been a trap.

I was trapped.

And Garrus’ breathing didn’t exactly sound great either. Panting, I was used to that from him, since turians didn’t sweat, but this was shallow, clenching breathing. Which was new and definitely not good.

“I know you’re here, Arison. If you keep hiding, who knows what will happen to our dear Advisor here.”

I’d psyched myself up for hours, because I knew seeing Caitus in person was going to suck shit. I’d taken the two stims, because I hadn’t wanted to feel anything. But now my pulse was just racing, and I was frozen, and I could hear my heart skipping beats, and I still felt fear.

He was sitting back in that chair like he was a goddamn king on a throne.

Convince him.

Fuck. Fuck all this. He’d done all this just to have me again. He’d killed Dr. Nwosu. He’d had kids murdered. He’d almost killed the General. And now Garrus was choking out breaths. All because he’d wanted me.

The woman he’d made, that was what he’d said.

My rifle was still on my back. Don’t know why I’d even brought it, since I’d known this would be close quarters. I just always had one with me, even if this one wasn’t the right weight like the one I’d lost when I’d downed the Catalyst. But my pistol was holstered at my belt. I could get that.

Only I couldn’t, because I was shaking.

And my mind was racing, because I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Garrus I didn’t remember all that much of what happened to me as a kid. You’ve seen a hundred dicks, you’ve seen them all, it all blurs together. But now? Now that I could see Caitus? He wasn’t just one of the hundred or thousand anymore.

I could remember.

How scared I’d been. How much he’d made me hurt. Every position he’d put me in. The words I’d learned in the turian language from when he didn’t have his translator on, back when you actually could turn off translators.

I’d used one or two of those words in front of Garrus before, and he’d been floored. They hadn’t translated, because those weren’t the sort of thing you program into an Alliance translator system. But he still never guessed why I’d known those words. He must have assumed I didn’t know what they meant.

I did.

“Arison, I know you’re there. Do you like hearing your name? I never knew what to call you all those years ago.”

Oh, he’d known what to call me. Whore. Slut. Pathetic. Desperate. Weak. For all it mattered, those were my name to him back then. And now? Now he felt like he owned some part of me? Some part of my legacy?

Like he was the fire that had turned me from iron into steel.

I’d made all my decisions. I’d fucking suffered for them. That was all me, from the beginning. It had always been Shepard. Alone. That was what it always came down to, because when anyone else would have broken, I was still pushing on. And that wasn’t because Caitus had paid to stick his dick in me until I cried. That was because of who I was. Who Mom and Pops had made me.

“Take down the shields, Arison.”

And then they were down.

I hadn’t wanted to. I hadn’t meant to. I didn’t want to give him any inch more of me.

But I’d listened like I was eight again and desperately hoping that obeying orders meant everything was over faster and maybe even hurt less.

And I knew they were down because he moved forward in his chair, leaning like there was some climactic moment on a screen from a vid. And I could see his talons grip into the chair. And his pupils got bigger, because he had power. He got off on power. That was why he hurt me. That was always what he wanted.

“You look tired, Arison.”

I’d looked tired from the moment I’d popped out of Mom kicking and screaming, probably. If I bothered to put on makeup, that was the only time I ever didn’t look tired. But I didn’t feel tired now. My muscles were trying to pull themselves off my damn bones, and my hands were shaking, weren’t they? Fuck, pulling a trigger was going to be hard like this.

Even harder, since couldn’t move. I was frozen. Wearing my fucking armor like that would have been able to protect me from Caitus. And he was staring at me like I wasn’t wearing anything at all.

I’d fucking dreamed of shooting him. Saying something witty and smart and then just blowing his brains out and known that for once, I’d been the one hurting him.

But I was fucking frozen in place. Had been for how long now?

“I’ll keep this brief, for the Advisor’s sake,” Caitus purred out.

_raking his talons down my thighs as slowly as he could. lines of blood and torn skin. purred out, “if you come, i’ll stop.” _

“You let the whole galaxy believe their hero was dead. You lied to trillions of people. You lied to the dear Advisor, too, didn’t you? He isn’t the most talented actor, and he was broken without you, wasn’t he? But he’s a soft-hearted person, isn’t he? He forgave you. Helped you. How will the galaxy react to learning that their hero lied? Hid. Like a coward. I can’t imagine your government will be very forgiving, either. You’d at least be court-martialed for going AWOL.”

I’d thought about all that before. But I’d been planning to fucking die at some point, and it was all Nwosu’s fucking fault that I didn’t, and she couldn’t even be alive for me to scream at her about it. And empty chair therapy wasn’t going to do fuck all for me now.

“Regardless, there isn’t much time left, by my calculations. Or rather, there’s exactly the right amount.”

_“you’ve got thirty minutes, turian. and don’t slice her up like last time, medigel isn’t fucking cheap. and humans aren’t a dime a dozen like vorcha.” _

_“add the medigel to my charge. besides, she likes it. don’t you, girl?”_

“I can let you leave here without telling a soul. You can return to your miserable hospital just hiding from the world. I can even give you the antidote for the Advisor. But you need to earn it.”

_“put the guns down, and we can talk.”_

_hesitant agreement from the raider in charge._

_and then Nwosu charging in with a damn pistol and—_

Caitus leaned back in his chair now, waiting.

Garrus’ life.

All the lying and hiding I’d done, just so I could heal in some goddamned peace and quiet. So no one had to see me weak. Because enough people had seen me weak in my life, and I’d gone into the academy saying no one ever would again.

What was the real cost of all that?

Just thirty minutes of pain now? I’d suffered it for years. I was more used to pain now than I was as a kid. There wasn’t anything Caitus could deal out now that would hurt me like he had back then. Just thirty minutes of dissociating and choking down whatever he gave me, and Garrus could live, and I could go back to Havenwood and get Marina to give me more drugs to forget it all.

It would just be the same song and dance I’d grown up with. Close your eyes, retreat out of your body or lean into the pain, whatever he wanted. And maybe even manage to get an orgasm out of it if I was lucky. It was just what I’d grown up with. Thirty minutes of pain? I’d been in pain my whole fucking life.

“You’re running out of time to make your decision, Arison,” he crooned at me, like he already knew what was going to happen. Like he was already envisioning—

_he wanted to hurt me. didn’t press his talons into me to keep me still. no, he wanted me to scream. dragged them down as hard as he could. panting. panting into my shoulder where his teeth were tearing into me too. so big. could drape over me again and again. and the words, I didn’t know what they were, but I knew what they meant. slave. whore. that was who I was. all I’d ever be—_

“This would be a one-time payment. I wouldn’t bother you ever again.”

And he was lying.

He was fucking lying, and I could tell just from the way he was staring at me, because once Commander Shepard gave into him, he wouldn’t ever stop craving that. He’d blackmail her again and again until she was a slave again. It wouldn’t just be thirty minutes she could force out of her head with drugs. It would be again and again and again and again and—

_forgot to turn the translator off. “weak. pathetic.” something about a fight. humans and turians. didn't matter when he hauled me up on the cold wall. “weak.” he made me hurt. “pathetic.”_

It was a chant to himself and the corpse of a little girl who couldn’t even remember her own name around how much she hurt.

“… Arison…”

I knew that voice. It wasn’t just me and Caitus alone. Not like it had been back then.

No. Garrus was here.

He’d been there for me. He’d listened to me. Respected me. Taken orders. Cared about me. Mourned me.

Arison.

I wasn’t a little girl anymore. And I wasn’t going to be a slave ever again. I had a name.

Arison Shepard.

Commander Arison Shepard.

And even if the world was going to learn I’d been lying to them all, even if I spent the rest of my life in Alliance disciplinary barracks, I wouldn’t ever be a slave again.

Commander Arison Shepard wasn’t someone Caitus had made. It was someone I had made. And if he hadn’t made me, he couldn’t unmake me.


	43. Fear and Trembling

I’d been pulling triggers since I was a kid.

“Gotta slow down there, kiddo,” Pops would say when my shots with the rifle that we kept by the front door went way wide from the bottles he’d lined up on the fence posts.

I’d been small enough that he’d had to reload it for me, but if I laid down and braced, the kickback wasn’t too bad, and sometimes I’d actually hit something that I was supposed to.

Mom was different.

Where Pops would be laying on his back on the ground next to me, only half paying attention, watching clouds and chewing straw, Mom would be laying on her stomach right beside me, coaching every inch of the way. And she didn’t reload for me. I had to fiddle and struggle with it myself.

“One shot, one kill, Arison,” Mom would gently remind me like the retired Alliance soldier she was whenever I didn’t hit the bullseye on the target she would set up across the yard. And I’d been a kid, not a world-class sniper back then, so I’d heard her repeat it probably a million times.

One shot, one kill, and I’d pulled a trigger more than a million times.

I hadn’t become the gunwoman I was without an obscene amount of practice, even if Mom had always told me that I was a natural.

I’d been raised on the rifle.

But all I could reach now was a pistol. It was a small, service issue thing, and it was cheap, because I’d taken it from Havenwood’s security. They invested in tech, not weapons. They’d never really needed them after the war. Until the raid.

Which Caitus had ordered, because apparently somehow, he’d known I was there. And he wanted me to come crawling back to him. And it all worked in his favor.

I didn’t have my rifle, the one that I knew inside and out, because that had died with Commander Shepard in the Catalyst. And the rifle on my back was turian issue. Too big for me. Too heavy for accuracy, unless I was bracing on something. That’d been my fucking security blanket, since it was going to jack shit as a weapon. And I hadn’t even thought about that before, because I’d just been gritting my teeth and planning on breezing through this high as all hell.

But I had the cheap pistol in my holster. And I’d always kept a pistol on me for backup when I was Alliance. And it had pulled its weight, especially when the husks got too close for comfort and a flank was dropping.

So, I knew what the fuck I was doing, even if this wasn’t my Black Widow. Even if it wasn’t the duct-taped rifle that Mom and Pops had coached me on. In some ways, a pistol was a lot simpler.

And even if this’d been a trap since the beginning, when had walking into a trap ever stopped me before?

“It’s a simple decision, Arison,” he reminded me.

He was right.

He was absolutely right.

My hands were still shaking, sure, because those fucking flashbacks to teeth and my own blood and skyrocketing pain wouldn’t stop, and the stims were hitting their half-life soon, and Garrus was barely breathing, and the monster who’d haunted my fucking nightmares was right in front of me, so my hands had a right to be shaking.

But my legs were still holding me up, so I could do something. I could walk.

He couldn’t have power over me anymore.

Maybe in a lot of ways this was the simplest decision I’d ever been given. Because either I was going to let everything I’d been through mean absolutely fuckall, or I did exactly what Mom and Pops had raised me to do and pull a goddamned trigger. And pulling triggers wasn’t exactly hard. I did that shit on autopilot.

I needed to move. It needed to get that pistol against his plates. It needed to be point blank, so even if I couldn’t keep the barrel steady, it wouldn’t matter.

So, I needed to start small.

Something simple. One foot out. My right foot, because that one had fared better from the burns than the left foot. There were even some days it didn’t hurt so bad I just wished Nwosu’d cut it off.

It was like watching through someone else’s eyes, watching my leg drag itself forward at the bottom of my vision. I was doing that, telling it to move, but I might as well have been wading through a pool of room temp mercury for all the control I felt like I had over it.

My boot hit the floor, and then there was the mechanical need to keep going. My body knew what walking was. It’d done it for decades now, even when I’d had to use a walker, I had the momentum drilled into me.

So, my left foot swung forward, too, on its own mostly.

And then? Then I was one small step closer to the one of the reasons I’d woken up crying as a kid every damn night. But I was one step closer to Garrus, whose breathing was really only sounding worse with every passing second that I couldn’t make myself get my shit together.

But my body was doing its own thing, and I was walking passed Garrus, and I couldn’t look at him, because I knew that if I saw blood dripping from his eyes, like the General, then I’d break. I had to keep moving, just like always. If I’d ever stopped before, if I’d ever let anything that happened really get to me, I would have crashed straight into the ground like the first Normandy.

I would’ve augered in.

Only I couldn’t keep walking. I couldn’t break into a run, because I had a goal, and that goal was only a few feet away. I needed to remember how to stop. And while I’d never really once stopped in my entire life, all it took was really looking at Caitus, really looking at the way his mouth plates were baring his sharp teeth, looking at the way his pupils were blown, 

And that had me screeching to a stop. Because even if I was looking down on him for once, he looked exactly like he had thirty years ago. So fucking smug.

Because he was imagining owning me again, me on my knees, him making me bleed. Probably would have me look at Garrus the whole time as some sick fucking reminder of the stakes, and also because as relaxed as Caitus had sounded about Garrus getting to enjoy how Caitus’d wired me, I knew that had been part of his lie.

I was right in front of him, and he just lazily raised one hand to gesture for me to get down. He wanted me on my knees, looking up at him, and waiting for orders. Just like the good old days back when I was four feet tall or whatever.

He thought he still owned me.

He thought he was so important that he owned the respect I’d earned with my own damn blood and grit as Commander Shepard.

He wouldn’t ever stopped believing he owned me, because he thought that if I’d survived him, surviving anything else was just because of him making me stronger.

But I was who I was because I’d been raised with Mom waking me up at sunrise to go on runs with her and Pops tucking me in at night with moonshine on his breath. Because Mom had been raising a little soldier, and Pops had been raising a little survivor.

I could feel breathing behind me, even though I knew there wasn’t anyone there. And I could remember Mom’s voice like she’d died yesterday.

“One shot, one kill, Ari.”

And if Pops was still alive, he’d put one of his calloused hands on my shoulder the real gentle and tender way he always had, and he’d just say, “Gotta slow down there, hon.”

I didn’t remember moving it, but suddenly the pistol was aimed at Caitus’ chest, like Mom and Pops had done that for me. They had, really, getting me to run on muscle memory with guns the way I did.

And I realized something I really didn’t want to.

I wanted to see Caitus scared shitless. I wanted to see him just as scared as he’d made me all those years ago, because now, fucking finally, his life was in my hands.

But he wasn’t scared. Instead he was just smiling, patronizing and coddling.

Motherfucker.

“Arison, you can’t kill me. If you do, Garrus will die. I know the antidote, but that knowledge will die with me.”

Garrus.

I couldn’t let him die. I’d deal with anything thrown at me if it meant saving him. He needed to live, because he deserved something better than me. He deserved real life, and a good one, too. He didn’t deserve to get killed because his fucking addict whore of an ex, maybe current, partner had been a coward and couldn’t stand thirty minutes of humiliation and pain.

But my suffering wouldn’t save Garrus, because Caitus didn’t know one important fact.

Ternian was alive, and it’d been hours before she’d gotten serious help. And Havenwood could do the impossible, I was proof of that. Even if Nwosu wasn’t there to drag Garrus kicking and screaming back to life, he wouldn’t die. And Marina was on the General’s ship. She knew basic triage, and there were other turians on that ship.

I wouldn’t be letting him die if I didn’t let Caitus win.

But more importantly, Garrus wouldn’t have wanted me to give up everything I’ve ever been and ever fought for in the blind hope that it might save him. He’d be furious, even if it was only in whatever afterlife turians had.

Because Caitus was a liar, had been from the start. Maybe there was an antidote, but then again, maybe there wasn’t. He’d been drinking the alcohol, too, so maybe he’d taken the only antidote before the meeting and there was none left. Or maybe he would tell me the ingredients, but making the antidote would take too much time. 

And it didn’t matter what Caitus said, this wouldn’t be a one-time exchange.

The pistol felt heavier than any firearm I’d ever held before. Fucking rocket launchers were easier to handle than this piece of bulk-purchase junk.

My fingers almost hurt just trying to clench it the grip enough to keep it in my hand. But I was still looking into Caitus’ eyes, those fucking eyes that I’d been able to remember after decades of repressing everything I could.

“Put that down, Arison,” he purred when I leveled the pistol on his face plates.

He wasn’t scared.

He wasn’t scared, and he wouldn’t ever be scared. He wasn’t capable of it.

I could capture him and torture him in every way imaginable, and he’d still never feel the fear I’d felt because of him. He couldn’t know the years of terror. He couldn’t know what it was like to be me, eight and having sobbed for days, getting to learn what sex was in the worst way anyone could. He couldn’t know what it was like to be jealous of Ellie for dying before someone could hurt her the way they hurt me.

I could tear out his talons and pull out his teeth and grind them up and make him eat them, and he’s still never be close to understanding anything I’d ever felt.

And worst of all? I wasn’t him. I wasn’t capable of that sort of fucked up bullshit. And I couldn’t ever be him, and I didn’t want to be him.

All I could do was make sure he never hurt anyone else ever again.

No more little kids screaming and crying when they saw him. No more blood dripping from his mouth and talons. No more lies and no more acting or bullshit sophistry that made people agree with him even when they didn’t.

Every fucking nerve in my body was screaming, and I knew exactly what I had to do.

I pushed the metal of the muzzle to his forehead.

He wouldn’t really feel the cold, not like a human would, but I’d guess I’d always known he never felt much anyway.

“See you in hell,” I spat out.

And before he could even open his mouth again, before he could blink, I did exactly what Mom and Pops had been training me to do since I was a little kid.

I pulled that motherfucking trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slow updates. I'm experiencing some very difficult health issues. This piece should be finished soon, but it may take a bit to produce something I'm proud of.


	44. From the Brink

It was dark on the ship. And it was dead silent. Normally, even when there weren’t any people onboard, a ship’s tech still made noise, even if it was just some beeping from navigation. Now, though, there wasn’t even reverb from the ship’s engine.

And that had Garrus on edge.

Every few seconds, the florescent lights would flicker on and then back off, too, making the whole thing seem like a scene from a cheap horror vid. At least he wasn’t totally blinded, though, because his visor display was still up, looking for heat signature readings. Even if most everything was just shades of blue, at least it gave him something he could focus on.

“Ship. . . at 2 . . .” the defunct VI stuttered out.

And even if the VI was able to get half-translated through with all the static from the speakers, nothing else seemed to be running. The world was just blue and black. So, nothing but the emergency audio was working. Great.

And from what little Garrus could make out, the ship was old, too. With the style of paneling and layout, it was more than half a hundred years out of date. And even back in its heyday, it definitely hadn’t been top of the line. It was hardy, though, something scrapped together to last, but only two types of people still used ships like this: the quarians, who wouldn’t have left it looking like this, or some seedy group trying to scrape under the radar in a battered freight.

He was supposed to be examining this ship for something. He couldn’t remember who had given him the orders, but it was probably some higher up at C-Sec who hadn’t wanted to miss his lunch break.

No one was supposed to do customs or imports searches alone, that was in the handbook. Which Garrus had read, even if he ignored about half of it on any given day. And normally he wouldn’t have cared about a few bent rules, but everything about this ship had him on edge. He hadn’t found any goods so far, and it looked like the ship hadn’t had passengers on it since he’d been born.

Even if being alone was unnerving, the thought of finding another person on here was even worse, though. It felt like the ship itself didn’t want anyone else onboard. Not that he could write that up in the report he was going to have to be typing up for the next six hours.

And now that he was thinking about the slogging he was going to have to do when he got back to headquarters, the worse his C-Sec uniform felt like it fit. And every step was getting more and more uncomfortable. It almost felt like there was someone breathing down his neck, right behind him, but when Garrus whipped around, grasping for his standard issue pistol, he found that there wasn’t anything behind him, just more empty hallway. And his hand hadn’t grasped the gun, because he didn’t even have a holster strapped on him.

“There’s no one here. Over.”

And then radio silence.

He always had his pistol with him, and no one ever went on a customs search without a weapon. Spirits knew what someone could find hidden behind some crates or in some storage closet.

“Is anyone there? Over,” Garrus asked.

He didn’t want to sound as nervous as he felt, because he’d never hear the end of it from whoever was on comms, but this whole place was wrong, and he shouldn’t have gone in here without backup or a weapon.

And then the ship’s speakers kicked on again, but the noise was completely garbled, so the translator couldn’t even pick up a single word of it. The language was guttural, maybe batarian, but Garrus didn’t know what any of the words meant, really. Probably saying the ship was running on emergency power. Or that it needed immediately maintenance.

“Requesting back up. Over.”

Still nothing. So, the comms people were probably on lunch break, too. Great.

No choice other than to just keep walking through the hallway, even if it felt like it went on forever. And it really shouldn’t have felt like that, not on a ship like this. Freights this old were compact and boxy. Long hallways were a waste of precious space.

“Hello?” Garrus called out, even if he wasn’t sure what possessed him to ask that to an empty, apparently never-ending hallway.

There wasn’t any response, which only had Garrus more on edge. And then the lights stopped flickering. And the VI didn’t even kick back in, so the ship was definitely just running on its last leg.

And then there was a faint sound. High-pitched like a pyjack’s squeak.

It was so quiet, Garrus almost didn’t catch it, but it’d come from further down the hallway, and despite the fact that all his training told him it was asking for trouble, Garrus broke into a dead run toward it.

He didn’t have backup, and he didn’t even have a gun, and if he included this in a report, he’d get an earful, but there was something wrong. He felt that somewhere deep inside him. 

But even at a sprint, the hallway didn’t seem to change. He was booking it, and even by turian standards, he was a quick runner, so he should have at least heard the noise get louder, but all he could hear was his own panting and his heart pounding, so Garrus skidded to a stop and listened again, trying to slow his breathing so he could actually hear again.

But it was completely silent again.

He walked another few, slow steps forward. And then another few.

And there it was again, only this time it sounded a little louder and a little longer. It definitely wasn’t a pyjack, and it was definitely something humanoid trying to be quiet.

It was in pain.

Garrus broke into a full tilt sprint, exactly what turians were best at, and this time, he didn’t stop. The paneling was moving, and he could hear his boots hitting the metal floor, but there weren’t any doors or panels or any landmarks. It felt like the hall was just a mobius strip running through the whole rusted out piece of junk, because even once his lungs started burning, he still hadn’t even found a single bolt out of place.

But he kept pushing on.

Turians weren’t persistence hunters. They stalked prey and took it down as quickly as possible. He wasn’t built for marathons, but every time he felt like he needed to stop, because his muscles felt like they were melting off his bones or because he felt like he couldn’t get another breath in no matter how hard he gulped down air, the noise would echo again.

He could tell it was a cry now. Something small and high pitched.

And that had some instinctive part of him locked on. And he wasn’t sure if it was prey drive or protective, but all he knew was that he needed to find where this noise was coming from.

“Just let me help you!” he yelled out into the darkness, but his voice sounded fried, like he’d been yelling for days.

And then suddenly, there was a corner.

And as he rounded it, he saw a door. It was a huge, halfway off its hinges, and cracked open slightly. And now he could hear the noise clearly.

It was crying. Soft, stifled, horrific crying. It felt like the sound was grabbing into his throat and pulling out his heart.

It sounded familiar, too, somehow. He wasn’t sure how, but he felt like he needed to be the one to fix this, to stop this crying.

He walked toward the door slowly, because this person was hurt and scared, and the last thing they needed was him scaring them more, even if he wanted—needed—the noise to stop.

He got his bare hand on the door frame, even though it was regulation to wear gloves. Maybe he’d been on his lunch break when he’d been called out. And after a rough tug on the door, though, the final hinge snapped off the wall, leaving the rusted door to clatter to the ground with a violently, and when he could finally see inside, Garrus froze.

The room was almost pitch black, but he could make out every detail of it like was noon on Palaven.

There wasn’t much inside. To the back left, there was a door that had already rusted away, and it led to a small bathroom. Next to that, there was a small dresser, made from plastic or something, because it was still intact, and to the far right, nearly pressed against the wall, was a massive bed.

It had sheets on it. Dark sheets. And they were tossed around, and the blankets were on the floor.

And the crying stopped completely.

“It’s okay,” Garrus whispered into the darkness as he tried to focus on his visor again for a heat signature. But there was just more blue and black, and he could barely focus on the readout, because there was something about the room that made it feel like the walls were closing in with every breath he took, and the air was being sucked out square inch by square inch.

It felt… evil.

“It’s okay,” he repeated.

And then there was a weak heat signature coming from behind the bed, where something looked like it was pressed up against the wall.

Taking his next step should have been easy, but every muscle in his body screamed for him to go backward. To turn around and go back into the hallway. Because something was wrong here. Something horrible had happened in this room. Something would come for him, too.

But someone had been in here, crying.

“It’s okay, I’m here to help.”

And he ordered his body to move forward, warning signals tossed out the airlock, because someone needed him. Someone needed his help.

When he finally got close enough to the bed, he could see that there was a small space between the mattress and the wall, where the metal frame dipped out of sight. And when he gently moved the bed to the side, he came face to face with a human.

She was tiny. Curled as close to the floor as she could manage despite the fact that one of her bony wrists was still handcuffed to the rusting metal of the headboard. Her pupils were blown wider than they should have been, even in the darkness. And those blue-rimmed black eyes were locked on him in abject terror. Her black hair was pulled back, with strands clinging to her face like she’d been crying or sweating, and she was only wearing a shirt, a human-style sports jersey.

“It’s okay, I’m here to help,” he promised on reflex.

But looking at her, he wasn’t sure what that even meant, because she didn’t seem to understand who he was or what he was. The translators weren’t working, but she had to tell by his tone what he meant. But even then, she was pulling back. Maybe she wanted to be saved. Maybe she wanted to die.

He wanted to die when she twisted further away, baring her thin legs, so he could make out the trails of scabbed talon marks tracing up and down her rain-thin body.

“Let me help,” he begged, reaching one of his ungloved hands toward the handcuff on the metal frame.

She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t pull further away, she just kept her wide eyes locked on him and her body tightly curled up against the wall.

There was no way he was getting that handcuff off the frame, and he didn’t want to leave her until C-Sec could find someone with a way to cut her free. And he wasn’t about to suggest she break her thumb to slip out, because even if he’d seen humans in custody do that, this girl had already been through too much.

And then her eyes darted to the door locked on something behind Garrus, and he froze. Because he knew what real terror looked like, and it was frozen on this little girl’s face. She knew the real things in the world to be scared of, not monsters in closets.

The girl opened her mouth to say something, and Garrus felt that breathing down his neck again. Just like he had in the hallway. Only this time, he knew there was something behind him. It wasn’t just a suspicion. He could actually feel the warm breath sliding down his plates.

He needed to turn around, but his body didn’t seem to understand that. He tried to move, but not a single muscle budged. He needed to protect this little girl. He needed to save her. But then his body was moving, and not because he was telling it to.

“Arison!” he shouted as he felt himself being dragged away from her by whatever it was behind him.

And suddenly, painfully, everything wasn’t silent and dark anymore.

Everything was noise, and everything was colors and blurred and painful. Everything hurt. It was loud. Voices, lots of voices, and whirring and whining of a ship actually working.

He breathed in, and it hurt. Everything hurt, and it felt like there was a sandbag on his chest. And that he’d pumped out all of his blood hours back. 

“He’s conscious,” Arison said quickly, and then something pressed even more on Garrus’ chest, and he wanted it gone. He couldn’t breathe. He already couldn’t breathe.

“Arison Shepard, get the hell out of my way.”

He needed the hands off of him. He needed to breathe.

“Don’t do that,” a turian ordered, and then Garrus felt his wrists being held against something cold. 

He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, and the pressure on them hurt. It hurt like someone was sawing his hands off at the wrists.

He couldn’t remember why, but everything hurt. It was hard to think.

“Garrus! It’s okay. Calm down,” Commander Shepard ordered.

Arison was here. Arison. Something with her. Something wrong.

He needed to see her.

“Arison,” he panted out, but it didn’t sound like his voice. Sounded far away. Sounded scared.

Everything was blurred, just bright shapes that made his head swim.

“Stay still.”

“You’re safe,” Arison promised, but she sounded so far away. Slipping away. Like she always did. Leave him alone.

“Arison—”

“Slow down your breathing,” the turian ordered. Subvocals telling him to listen. Back down.

But she was going to leave. He needed to tell her he wouldn’t leave her there.

“Arison—”

“Vakarian, that’s an order,” the General snarled.

“Arison—”

“Give me the sedative—”

“No—” 

And then the whole world throbbed. And got softer. And softer. And his chest stopped hurting. And the panic melted away.

And everything faded to quiet black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the massive delay, I was having severe health issues. Fortunately, I'm doing better now, and I always kick back off my writing year in October. Thank you all for being so patient, I hope this was worth the wait.


	45. Second Contact

His hand was warm.

Something touching the skin. Directly on his skin.

No gloves. Supposed to be wearing gloves.

But it was so warm.

Just five digits holding him gently.

It felt right.

And when his eyes opened, he could see the five thin fingers. They looked small. Fragile.

They always looked like that, though. Humans didn’t usually wear gloves.

“Does this hurt?”

It was quiet. Tender. Then he saw the hand pulling away, and he felt cold.

“No,” Garrus tried to insist, but it didn’t sound right. Like the translators were off. But she was so warm, so he tried to tighten his fingers to get hers to stay.

They moved in slow motion, just barely enclosing the last centimeters of her hand.

He couldn’t move his head.

Something was wrong. Because she sounded… different.

Tender. She was never tender.

It was nice. It felt nice. But something had to be wrong.

He couldn’t move his head, and her hand looked so small. And wrong. The skin was warped. Like marble.

Didn’t used to look like that.

“You lost a lot of blood,” she murmured.

A lot of blood? He couldn’t remember anything.

What did he remember?

There was the war. The final push. Toward the Catalyst. Toward the beam.

Fear. Pain. Had he been shot?

“Made it,” he coughed out, and this time it went through the translators.

She made it. Through the beam. Brought down the Reapers.

Of course, she had. Why wouldn’t she? Couldn’t ever die. Killed Reapers on foot. Why was he surprised she made it?

“It was easy, Garrus. Don’t worry about me.”

Easy. Everything always easy for her. Killing, diplomacy, engineering. She was talented.

He was lucky.

But he still worried. The war was done. She’d need to stop taking stims. Detox.

“Try not to, Commander.”

Another gentle squeeze on his hand. But he didn’t see it, because his eyes were closing. And hard to open.

“You’re high as a kite, Garrus. Go back to sleep.”

He was tired. And his eyes wouldn’t open again. And her hand was so warm. He was cold, though.

“That an order?”

“Yes, Vakarian, that’s an order.”

Orders were orders, and it was dark. Time to sleep and—

~~~

When he finally opened his eyes, it was all he could do to snap them shut again right away and not start dry heaving.

Bright, florescent lights were bouncing off white walls, and there were machines beeping all around him, and pain was rocketing through his body, and the room smelled like caustic cleaning solution and iron, like someone had been cleaning up blood. A lot of blood.

There was just too much input, and everything hurt too much.

A groan he hadn’t meant to make came out of his mouth, and scratching out sound hurt worse than he ever could have expected. He might as well have swallowed glass and then followed it up with gnawing some cotton for a few days.

It was like he was having the world’s worst hangover.

The only thought Garrus could process was simple: he wanted a glass of water and a fistful of pain killer. Getting that out was going to be the hard part, though. He gave another groan, which he’d meant to start out as words, but that didn’t really happen.

The Spirits apparently had some mercy on him, though, because the lights dimmed, and then after someone walked around the room with impossibly loud steps, the beeping even dropped a few dozen decibels.

“And you told me to take care of myself,” someone commented from next to him.

The voice was familiar. Someone he’d met recently. Someone…

Garrus forced his eyes open again, despite the fact that just the thought of seeing anything again had his stomach clenching.

The ceiling was white. Paneled. He was laying down. Slightly elevated.

He was in a hospital room, or at least in some place with a medical bent. So, where was he?

Someone had been holding his hand. Someone with marbled skin—

_Shepard breaking into his apartment in the dead of night looking like a skeleton. Saying she wasn’t dead. Asking for his help. And him agreeing to help, because for once in her life she was asking._

Garrus didn’t even realize he was bolting up in bed until the whole world crashed into black, and he felt the tech pushing him back down with more strength than he expected a human to have.

“Slow down,” the tech ordered gently, and by the time the world started swimming back into view, Garrus could make out that he was holding out a glass of water. “You lost a lot of blood.”

Told him to take care of himself…

“Hao?” Garrus asked, and his voice sounded like it’d been put through five different low-quality translators, scratchy and barely understandable.

The tech who’d watched Nwosu die, the one he’d hoped would take one of the psychs up on the offer of some therapy if not some medication. He was sounding better. At least like he’d slept recently.

“In the flesh, Detective,” Hao offered, moving the water closer. “Don’t drink this too quickly. Throwing up is the last thing your body needs right now.”

“The last thing you want to clean up, too,” Garrus joked after reaching a shaking hand out for the water.

Hao laughed, and it sounded genuine. He was a good person. He’d been the one to insist Garrus should talk to Arison, actually talk to her.

Arison.

“Where?” Garrus demanded, trying to find the words he knew he had, somewhere. But he could barely think, and everything was messy and blurring together and all of the questions were about the same person.

“Who?” Hao asked.

Arison. Something was wrong with Arison….

“Where’s Arison?” 

Something about her being alone. Something about the kids…. Something…

Caitus.

Something crashed to the ground, but Garrus barely heard it.

He’d failed. He’d fallen into Caitus’ trap. He’d left Arison alone.

What if she’d left again? What if she was furious at him? What if she’d disappeared again? If she didn’t want to be found, he’d never see her again.

He’d left her alone with Caitus.

“Arison,” he repeated. Why didn’t Hao know who he was talking about. Everyone knew Arison. She was Commander Shepard. She’d saved the world. She’d saved Havenwood, why didn’t—

Commander Shepard was dead. Arison was going by her dead sister’s name, she was—

The beeping was louder. Faster. Head-splitting again.

“Deep breaths,” Hao encouraged.

“Caitus—” Garrus started.

“Deep breaths.”

And then it all came rushing back so quickly, and Garrus couldn’t get enough air in his lungs no matter how much he tried gasping.

Who knew what was happening? Who knew about Arison and Caitus and—

“Marina,” Garrus gasped out, desperately grabbing Hao’s arm.

“I’ll get Dr. Santos,” Hao promised, “but you need to relax before I leave. I need you to take some deep breaths for me.”

And then Hao was counting, and Garrus managed to mostly keep up with it, just breathing in and then out. It felt like he’d deflated a lung, because every breath in was a struggle.

But Hao’s droning numbers were steady. In 5. Out 5. In 5. Out 5.

It felt like an eternity of just those repeating numbers until Garrus could start to really see the world again.

Everything hurt just as badly as it had when he’d first opened his eyes. His head. His chest. Even his legs. Even with tubes hooked up and lines dripping into him. They were probably saline, because if there were painkillers in the drip, he wasn’t feeling them. Havenwood didn’t work with turians very often, maybe they didn’t have the dosage right…

Havenwood. He was in Havenwood. The room was bright, and it still smelled like bleach and blood. His blood.

“Alright, I’m going to get Dr. Santos,” Hao promised, taking a tentative step back, like he was expecting Garrus to bolt up and rip out the IV like people did in the vids. Which he knew better than to do, because he had at least half his brain online.

Once Hao left, though, Garrus realized that everything looked… wrong. The room felt… Empty. Static. Like he was missing something…

There wasn’t an overlay. There weren’t readouts or stats. Because his visor was gone.

The beeping started up again, loud and quick, as Garrus turned around to look the visor, because he needed it. It was part of him. And he needed it for something else…

Recording. Was it still recording? The storage was backed up externally, so it wasn’t like it was going to run out of space and delete or rewrite, but he needed the evidence it had. Had Caitus taken it? If that recording was gone…

“Garrus,” Marina greeted with a smile.

But as much as he wanted it to, her smile didn’t calm him down at all. Just because she hadn’t bothered to hide any of her emotions before, didn’t mean she hadn’t learned something from Arison, who would lie to him in a heartbeat if she thought it would make him feel better.

“Is Arison okay?”

The words came out punched, but Marina’s smile didn’t falter at all.

“Arison is fine. Regretting her drug habit, absolutely. But she’s fine. You, though, have been through the ringer. How do you feel?”

He knew he should answer her question. It would have been simple to just say, “Like shit,” and move on, but he couldn’t focus on anything other the guilt and panic that were settling in every inch of his body.

“Caitus?” he asked.

“Caitus is dead, Garrus. You should worry about yourself for right now. You lost a lot of blood.”

The same way the General had. Because he’d been stupid enough to trust Caitus at all, to think that maybe he was immune to some part of his evil because… because…

Why had he even thought that? Because they were both men? Because they were both turians? Because no one in their right minds would ever harm a Primarch’s advisor?

He’d been an idiot.

“Where’s Arison? I need to apologize—”

“You need to rest. Arison can wait.”

“But she—”

“She has her head in a toilet right now and a matching IV drip. You need to rest.”

“What happened?”

Marina let out a small sigh and let the door slide shut behind her. As she moved closer, Garrus could see exactly how tired she looked, and all that did was make him feel that much worse.

“Arison pinged us that you needed medical assistance and gave us a location. General Ternian sent down a shuttle and her men retrieved you both. We stabilized you and brought you back to Havenwood. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for about twenty-four hours now.”

“Ternian?”

“The General was recalled to Taetus to speak with the Primarch. She told me to tell you explicitly not to worry about her, in fact.”

He probably already had a message from Adrien demanding he get his ass back to Taetrus, too, and tell his side of the story. Because a council member was dead, and Garrus had been there for it, and as much as the General was probably going to try to cut him out of the narrative to save his ass, Garrus wasn’t going to be able to lie.

The entire galaxy needed to know exactly what Caitus was. Garrus would lie about Arison’s involvement, but people like Caitus needed to know they weren’t safe anymore. And if that meant Garrus lost his job, the only thing he’d ever done that his father had been proud of, even if it meant that he had to pack up his shitty apartment and scrape by somewhere even shittier, it was what he needed to do.

“My visor?”

“Last I saw, Arison had it.”

Arison knew how it worked. She’d worn it once or twice. Well, held it up to for her to look out of, since it wasn’t fitted for a human head. He’d showed her how to use it, and she’d taken to it like a natural. She knew exactly how to access the databanks and the functions. And he hadn’t let her know that he was getting film of what happened.

And he hadn’t stopped it before he passed out.

The beeping was louder again. Faster.

“Garrus, you need to relax.”

“Arison—”

“Garrus, you need to relax, or I’m opening the sedative drip.”

“I left her alone.”

Garrus could see Marina moving toward him, but all that meant was that he was reaching out to her, trying to get her to listen. She had to understand. He’d failed Arison when she needed him most. He’d failed. He’d put her in danger, and—

It felt like ice was shooting through his arm as Marina opened a secondary drip line, and suddenly his chest felt heavier and the world darkened, like someone had dimmed the lights again.

“She’s fine,” Marina promised softly, but the words bounced off the walls and echoed a few times before Garrus could understand what they meant.

“She’s fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Arison confronted Caitus, I told myself, "Only two more chapters and an epilogue, and we'll be done." Was I right? No, absolutely not. Please enjoy the consequences of my lack of writing self-restraint.


	46. To the World of the Waking

The words weren’t words at first, not really. He could hear someone was saying something. And when people were talking, it was supposed to make sense. Usually. But even with him trying to parse what the sounds were supposed to mean, it still took what felt like ages to start putting the noises together into something he could process.

“Are you sure he’s going to be fine?” was the first thing he could make out.

And he didn’t know he was anxious, or even what he would be anxious about, until he could make out Arison’s voice, and the tension he had in his chest melted away.

She was near him. Talking about him. She cared. He’d been panicked about something, but it didn’t matter. Shepard was here to fix things.

He wanted to tell her he was fine, even if that was a lie. Because he felt like he’d been spaced, and his lungs had been pulled inside out and then stuffed back inside him, but she didn’t need more things to worry about.

He wanted to tell her he was fine, but words were… hard.

“You may forget it constantly, Arison, but I’m a child psychologist, not a physician.”

And even if he felt like a dead man walking, just hearing Marina’s voice had him sure that everything was fine. Arison lied. Marina didn’t. 

“General Ternian was better within twenty-four hours.”

“Well, General Ternian didn’t down several whole glasses of poison.”

The General… Poison…

“Caitus,” Garrus managed to groan out, even if his eyes still weren’t opening like he wanted them to. He felt his heartbeat jumping, too, even though he couldn’t piece together what was happening.

“He’s dead,” Arison said, using the most reassuring tone he’d ever heard. And even if something deep inside of him was itching. Something that would've normally had him panicking, she was talking like the Commander. Nothing could go wrong when she sounded like this

“Garrus, can you open your eyes?” Marina asked.

And it took everything he had to manage it. And what he saw had him letting out a punched-out sigh.

Arison was sitting at a chair by his side, leaning forward, her blue eyes locked on him like he was the only person in the room. He could see that Marina was hovering near his IV out of the corner of his eye, and when he finally managed to look away from Arison, he saw that Marina looked… nervous, even though his vitals all looked good.

“You’re in Havenwood. Does that sound familiar?” Marina asked, her eyes narrowed like she was suspicious of something. Which didn’t make any sense.

Of course, he knew what Havenwood was.

“Arison…”

What did he want to ask? Everything felt so slow, like he was drunk. Caitus was dead, so what did he need to ask?

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Arison said, actually smiling.

It was weird to see her smile like that, because she was normally so serious. She didn’t show much emotion ever. Hadn’t ever, at least as far as he’d known her. It was how she kept herself safe.

“Fine?”

“You nearly died, Garrus, you need to be worrying about yourself,” she insisted, motioning to the monitors behind Marina. “You were lucky General Ternian had a universal donor aboard her ship. And that between ten of us, we could figure out how vein-to-vein transfusion worked between turians.”

“What’s the last thing you remember,” Marina cut in.

Garrus didn’t miss the almost furious look Arison shot to Marina. It didn’t make sense, and he didn’t understand what he’d missed, because everything felt hazy.

Right. The question.

What did he remember? Caitus. On Taetrus. Drinking, and then starting to pass out. Because he’d taken the poison like a damn idiot. But he was safe here, and even if he felt like he… should be upset about something… he just couldn’t. Maybe it was something in the IV bag. But Havenwood saved Arison. And General Ternian. If they thought he needed something, he probably did.

“I was drinking with Caitus, and I taped his confession. And then I started passing out.”

“And then I took care of him,” Arison cut in quickly.

Why would she say that? Of course, she took care of him. What couldn’t she take care of? And why did he feel like he’d said something wrong? That was what he remembered, and it all seemed right.

“You don’t remember waking up half a dozen times?”

He didn’t remember much. Something about a long, dark hallway. Something about marble. Something about the tech he talked to days ago… But none of it made sense.

“No.”

Marina pursed her lips, looked to Arison, and then shook her head.

“Well, you’ve stabilized, and the sedatives should be out of your bloodstream in a few hours. And then I imagine your physician will discharge you.”

Marina was mad about something, but all Garrus could tell was that it wasn’t directed at him. And it was definitely directed at Arison. That much made sense, though. She was the closest thing to family Arison had, and family was a mess. Garrus knew that firsthand.

“My father is going to kill me,” Garrus realized out loud. Because there was no way he was staying on the advisory board. Because he’d been involved in killing a turian. Because said turian was a well-respected military man and politician. Because Garrus couldn’t pretend he hadn’t had anything to do with it.

“I would worry more about your government first,” Marina commented blandly.

She was busy picking up some papers from a counter nearby, because she must’ve been doing work while she was waiting for him to wait up. The fact that she had real, physical paper, and there wasn’t a datapad in sight, had Garrus confused for a moment, until he remembered that she kept physical copies of her notes for protection. Right.

Weeks ago, he’d thought she was paranoid. Now, he knew she was just doing her due diligence.

“I’ll leave you two to deal with that plan of attack. In the meantime, I’ll be in my office getting a second night without sleep while I finish these case notes.”

“Good luck,” Garrus offered, but Marina was out of the room before he even finished.

“She’s in a mood,” Arison offered with a small shrug when he looked back to her.

“How long have I been out?”

“Two days give or take. In the meantime, your server inbox went from constantly pinging to having only one message.”

“From Adrien?”

“From Adrien.”

He’d been locked out of the server, which made sense. He should have seen that coming, which meant he should have backed up some of the more messages he’d had saved to somewhere else, but he hadn’t planned this out that far. So, if Adrien had done what he should have, Garrus didn’t have access to anything from the Hierarchy server anymore, just a summons.

His chest tightened some, but not nearly as much as he thought it should have. It had to be the medication dripping into him. Because everything felt like it was some sort of sim, not real life. Not like he was going to meet the man every turian answered to and have to justify being part of a murder of another government official.

“He ordered you get your ass to Taetrus thirty-one hours ago. I took the initiative to send a message to him that you were incapacitated for the time being, so he wouldn’t declare you AWOL.”

“From you?”

“Oh, I used Marina’s digital signature. She keeps her passwords on a note in her desk.”

Which explained why Marina had seemed so mad at Arison.

And things were starting to sort into place in Garrus’ head now that he was actually able to think again. He’d bought into Caitus’ game, and he’d left Arison, but she was here. In one piece. And she looked… better than she had in years.

“You’re okay?” he asked, and it came out softly.

“I’m fine, Garrus. It was easy.”

“Easy?”

How could it have been easy? Caitus had tortured her. He’d hunted her down, because he wanted to see Arison again. It was barely there, so fuzzy Garrus couldn’t remember what was a dream and what was reality, but Arison had taken too many stims, hadn’t she?

“The moment you were down, Garrus, I finished it. You needed help.”

“How?”

“I shot him, Garrus. He was, what, fifteen feet away? I know I’m getting old, but I could pull that off in a nursing home.”

“The guards?”

“They rushed in when they heard the shot. I had to kill them before General Ternian brought in her people.”

They’d been young. There was no way they’d known what Caitus was doing. No one had known, not really. And Caitus had to have talked them into it, the same way he’d gotten Garrus to drink that poison. But Garrus knew better than to say any of that, because the look in Arison’s eyes was suddenly cold enough to have him pausing.

She didn’t usually get mad at anyone from her crew.

“I told you, Garrus. It was easy.”

She looked… younger. Like she had when they’d first met. Maybe it was because she didn’t look so damn tired. Almost as long as he’d known her, she’d had dark spots under her eyes. Now, though? She looked like she’d maybe actually gotten some real sleep for once in her life.

And now that he was looking for it, he could see that her tremors were barely there.

Of course, it'd been easy for her. She was Commander Shepard. She always did the impossible. That was why he loved her. Because she was an unstoppable force of nature, and even getting to be in the wake of what she did felt good.

“You’re not mad at me,” Garrus said slowly, because even if he knew it was true, he almost couldn’t believe it.

“Garrus, you nearly died. Of course, I’m not mad at you.”

“But I left you—”

“Caitus manipulated you like he did everyone. Besides, it’s hard to be mad at a man bleeding from every orifice.”

But he should have known not to trust Caitus at all. Because he’d known what he was capable of. He’d looked at Arison’s file.

When Arison was mad, though, as much as she could hide it from everyone else, he’d learned the signs. She’d be more tense than normal. Her sentences would get just a little clipped. And she wasn’t mad, not now, and not at him.

“I’m sorry.”

Even if she wasn’t mad, he owed her that much. There wasn’t much more he could add to it, either. He should’ve been more on guard. If he’d read her full file, like Arison’d asked, he wouldn’t have underestimated Caitus. Then, he would’ve understood, which was all Arison had wanted.

He hadn’t wanted to read the file. Because he’d thought it would be too much to read Dr. Nwosu talk about what happened so clinically, but hearing the details drip from Caitus’ mouth? That’d been so much worse. Learning about it from an investigative standpoint, through a doctor’s lens, would’ve been bad, he hadn’t been wrong about that.

But things were starting to come back to him, and Garrus could still hear how satisfied Caitus had sounded.

_“You've seen how much she enjoys bleeding.”_

“Garrus, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

She sounded sincere. And he wanted to believe her.

“Besides,” she added with a thin smile. “You’ll need to save your apologies for Adrien.”

Adrien. Proof. The visor.

Garrus whipped his head around to see that his visor was sitting on the bedside table, leaned exactly the way he always placed it. Because Arison always remembered details like that.

And then he met her gaze again, his chest clenching. Because he hadn’t told her he would film. He hadn’t told her, because he knew she would’ve refused to let him. And they were going to need the proof…

But she still didn’t look angry. If anything, she looked… calm.

It didn’t make sense. He’d failed her. He’d hidden things from her. And here she was, still standing next to him, looking at peace with something that he didn’t understand.

“I took the liberty of preparing your vid.”

It took Garrus a moment to figure out what exactly he was feeling. Because he’d expect her to be furious. He’d expected her to feel betrayed. For her to leave him again, because he’d gone behind her back, even if it was to protect her.

Instead, she looked the exact same way she did during any briefing. Focused, attentive, and intense. She was Commander Shepard again. The woman he loved.

He was… relieved.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

And he knew what she was actually asking.

“Fine enough to deal with whatever you’re thinking about.”

Arison gave a crooked smile, like she was proud of him for knowing exactly what she was thinking, and then sat back in her chair, looking every inch the Commander he’d always known she was. It didn’t matter if he could see her scarred hands shaking, because she wasn’t just some addict or a victim, she had that wild, driven look in her eyes.

Commander Shepard was back, somehow, and she had a plan.

“I want you to walk me through what exactly you’re going to say to Adrien. Start to finish.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, everyone, we're almost done! We only have the epilogue left, which seems absolutely wild to me. Thank you so much for reading this. I can't believe this project ended up being the size it did, because I thoroughly intended this to be about 20k. Not nearly 120k. The epilogue may take two weeks to go up, because I'm expecting it to be longer than a normal chapter length, just so you know!  
Also! If you're eligible to vote in the US, please do so. If you're using mail-in ballots, be sure to check the recommended return time for your state, as well. I need to turn mine in today just to be safe.


	47. Epilogue: The End of the Beginning

All Garrus could think about while standing in front of the door to Adrien’s temporary office on Taetrus was how stupid it was that he was feeling nervous.

Caitus was dead, and he’d deserved it more than just about anyone Garrus’d ever had the misfortune of meeting. Even the criminals he’d thought were bad during his time at C-Sec’d been a joke compared to a man who got off on hurting kids and had never once felt bad about it.

Besides, Caitus couldn’t be un-killed, that trigger had been pulled days ago, and this was just tying up loose ends. A few hours ago, he’d messaged the Primarch back, saying he’d been declared fit for duty, and he’d be on Taetrus within the day. And Adrien’d messaged back with just one line.

_Send me anything you have before the meeting._

_Adrien_

Adrien didn’t want to make an example out of him, Garrus knew that much. General Ternian had been radio silent for the last few days, but at least Garrus hadn’t found any news that she’d been relieved of duty, forced into retirement, or executed. He wasn’t sure when the Hierarchy’d had their last execution, but it had been years, so that would have made the news at least somewhere.

So Garrus, as much as he’d wanted to get black-out drunk for it, had just pulled up the video on his visor completely sober and prepared himself to relive every painful second of falling into Caitus’ trap.

He’d been ashamed of a lot of things in his life, but nothing compared to this. He knew. He should’ve known. He’d been given a million different warnings.

Only Garrus hadn’t gotten the chance to beat himself up for it, because the video hadn’t existed anymore. All that was left in the visor’s memory were clips. They’d been edited and labeled in chronological order, and Garrus didn’t even have to guess that Arison’d been the one to do it. First of all, she was the only other person at Havenwood who knew how to work that visor. Second, of course she labeled them all that precisely. With timestamps in the name. Third, she wanted to be in control of how everything was going to come out. That made sense.

Years ago, he might have felt like it was a violation, but he hadn’t even felt a twinge of anger or even frustration. He’d actually just been relieved when playing through the clips, because he didn’t have to rewatching himself fucking up and letting Arison down. She’d chosen four concise moments, but everything was before Garrus passed out. And nothing was left about her being alive. Or about Havenwood.

She’d been meticulous, which meant that when Garrus’d attached the files and sent them off without text added, he’d felt like maybe this was something he could finally do right by her. Let the world know what she wanted them to know, while still getting her justice.

She hadn’t even seemed mad at him. Not even when a turian military transport ship showed up to take him from Havenwood back to Taetrus.

Standing in front of the door, though, this time without the General anywhere nearby and without Arison’s back up, had Garrus more nervous than he’d been since Shepard’d run into that beam. Adrien wouldn’t be able to just let this go and have things keep running like nothing’d happened. A prominent military veteran and well-respected financial advisor was dead, and there was proof Garrus has been there with him immediately before he was killed.

The best that Garrus was hoping for was a removal from office. What he’d do after that, he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t think about that much right now. Because even that best case scenario meant being at least an accessory to murder, his family probably finally officially disowning him, and losing his steady paycheck.

The worst-case scenario wasn’t even an execution because Garrus knew deep down Adrien wouldn’t do that. It would be a trial, if everything went completely sideways in the meeting, and that would be enough of a mess from start to finish. It would drag the Vakarian name through the mud just as much as the Oremnion name.

But he’d done what was right. He’d helped make sure justice was served, and it would’ve been served decades back if there’d been any real justice in the galaxy.

Caitus should have been killed years ago, and he should’ve suffered a lot more than he had.

Garrus’d helped rid the world of one more monster, and that was something to be proud of, no matter how badly the meeting went.

At least that was what Garrus kept repeating to himself as he opened the door.

The office was still set up more or less the same as the last time Garrus had seen it, only the giant screen that’d once been stuck on a battlefield was frozen on one of his clips, and Adrien was sitting at his desk instead of standing in front of the scene.

“Sir—” Garrus started, but Adrien shook his head.

“Sit, Garrus,” the Primarch ordered.

It didn’t sound like Garrus was about to get a dressing down, but it didn’t exactly sound like whatever was going to be said was particularly good, so Garrus just shut his mouth, closed the door, and sat in the chair that’d been put in front of the Primarch’s desk.

There wasn’t anything on the desk, and it wasn’t like there were bodyguards or anything, so maybe this wasn’t going to be the worst-case scenario.

“I’m sure you understand the situation I’m in,” Adrien started after a second. “One of my top officials was murdered less than a mile from my office. A decorated and well-respected General was involved as well as one of my own personal advisors, who had been on personal leave. We were in a precarious enough situation before, but this makes the Hierarchy look weak, Garrus. We look like a divided government desperate and disorganized enough to start resorting to personally murdering our political opponents.”

Arison’d run him through the things he was supposed to say, but every single word of that was gone, because he hadn’t thought about that part of it. He hadn’t thought about the fact that the Hierarchy was struggling to get a head start in a colonization war. Of course, this was going to attract intergalactic attention. And not just because someone had finally reminded the world about the power slavers still had in every political circle, closeted or not.

“I… hadn’t considered that,” Garrus admitted.

He probably shouldn’t have. Arison’d told him to be confident for this meeting. But he’d never wanted to be a politician, and he wasn’t even really good at it. Not like Adrien and Arison were. They’d practically been born for it. He was just a glorified cop who’d happened to make the perfect bad decisions to end up on Shepard’s ship and in her good graces.

“I will need to make a clear statement in order to convince other governments that we aren’t weakened and now isn’t the time for someone to swoop in and try to claim any of our former colonies.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I’m not done, yet, Vakarian.”

The last name had Garrus snapping his mouth shut. Adrien still didn’t look mad. He wasn’t exactly someone who wore his heart on his sleeve, but that didn’t mean Garrus hadn’t spent five years with him learning tells. And Garrus wasn’t exactly known for being unobservant.

“Apologies, sir.”

“I understand that you took that footage.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s heavily edited. There could be claims that it’s doctored. I assume it was edited to protect the identity of whoever informed you of this…”

Adrien hesitated, and then distastefully added,

“…issue?”

There was a reason Adrien’d been a good Primarch, and that was because nothing slipped passed him. And that had Garrus on edge because he didn’t like where this was going. He was going to lie if it came down to it. He’d do the exact thing that no turian was ever supposed to do, but he’d lie to his Primarch for Arison.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have other evidence of Caitus’ involvement in the slave trade?”

The file. Arison’s file was full of evidence, even if it wasn’t DNA evidence. And there was the kid that had just come into Havenwood. It wasn’t a lot, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t any.

“Yes, sir.”

Adrien sat back in his desk and took in sharp breath. His eyes darted to the screen. Garrus couldn’t help but look over, too. And he winced, because he even if he couldn’t remember much of the conversation before he’d gotten drugged, he could tell this was some part of Caitus’ speech from when Garrus had started to feel the effects of the poison.

“What would you do, if you were in my position, Garrus?” 

That was at least an easy question.

“I’d fire me.”

“And how would you let the other races know we aren’t weakened by infighting?”

“Probably execute me.”

It was the truth. That would be an easy solution to everything, even if Garrus did have a pretty serious vested interest in keeping alive. He could lie to Adrien for Arison, but for himself? That was a different story.

“I’m not going to execute you, Garrus, but you are officially relieved from duty as my advisor with Hercus being formally promoted to the position you will be vacating.”

Garrus had expected that, and he’d expected the information to hurt, because his father’d been so proud of the job. Only instead, Garrus just felt a wash of relief. He hadn’t known what he was doing. He hadn’t liked the job. He’d taken it because Shepard’d been dead, and he hadn’t known what to do other than drink all day if no one was going to stop him. And this meant that Hercus would finally be doing a job he deserved. He was going to do a better job than Garrus had anyway.

“And the General?” Garrus asked quickly.

“General Ternian and I had a long conversation. She has been relieved of her position on the financial board, which I think was more of a reward than a punishment for her. She has also decided to enter retirement at my insistence.”

“Sir—” Garrus started again.

“General Ternian will be able to keep her pension, and that is the best I could do. She will not be on any advisory board in the future, nor will she be considered for military consultation in any official capacity. You are relieved of any and all advisory duties, and you will also not be placed on any advisory board in the future. You will also never officially be on a Hierarchy-backed payroll ever again.”

And then he added,

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Garrus didn’t, not until he realized the key word.

_Official_.

And then it didn’t exactly take a genius to realize what was going on.

“An official investigation will find Caitus guilty of at least a half dozen crimes, two of which may be pushed through other governmental courts, considering the damages would be owed to non-turian citizens. I will be forced to acknowledge that I hired and employed a pedophile for years without even a suspicion, and this will bring to light the fact that, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are many more people exactly like Caitus across the entire galaxy still alive and breathing.”

And Adrien wasn’t just saying this to explain why he’d made the decisions he’d made.

No, he was looking directly at Garrus, not blinking. And Garrus wasn’t an idiot. He knew exactly what was happening.

He’d been _officially_ fired.

“If you were to continue doing work for the Hierarchy, however, in an unofficial capacity, you would find yourself with an unofficial stipend.”

And then Adrien added,

“Perhaps two unofficial stipends.”

Garrus felt like all the blood left his body in one fell swoop. Adrien couldn’t know. Arison’d edited those videos, and she was the most detail-oriented person he’d ever met. She’d made sure there hadn’t been anything about her in them. And he’d watched them to make sure. There hadn’t been a single reference to her. There was no way—

“Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Garrus tried to lie, but it came out about as flat as it possibly could’ve.

“Who else could drag you all the way out to Arcturus?” Adrien asked.

And he sounded… almost amused.

Garrus’d been planning to lie for a lot of things. Say he’d killed Caitus. Say that he’d done the research himself. But every lie was slipping away with Adrien looking him at him like he was in the middle of his sights.

“She’s dead, sir,” Garrus tried to offer, but it wasn’t convincing at all, and even he knew that.

“Of course, she is. Which is why my offer for two untaxed and unofficial stipends remains the same.”

Politics was messy. Garrus hated it, but this wasn’t some game, he could tell that much. Adrien was serious, and he wasn’t just trying to wrestle information out of Garrus to use against him. Adrien had respected the Commander. He always had.

“If I agreed…”

“You would be assuring that no one with Caitus’ proclivities could continue to operate outside of the law.”

Garrus almost let out a scoff of a laugh.

It sounded too good to be true. Archangel had been a failure, because Garrus’d gone it alone. And he’d been hot-headed and thought he knew how the world worked. He’d been trying to change all of Omega.

Now, though, he’d have a job he didn’t hate, and Arison? She’d have an income again, and she’d have something actually to do and work toward. Something that mattered to her.

She’d said killing Caitus was easy, hadn’t she? How hard could it be for her to kill other slavers? She’d probably enjoy it. And who else could do something like this? Shepard and Vakarian, side by side again, taking down evil. It would be just like old times, and it was too perfect to be real.

“I don’t know what to say…” Garrus started, because he really didn’t. Thanking Adrien seemed trite, and anything short of that didn’t feel like enough. His Primarch was personally saving his skin and offering him an out no one else would ever have gotten. And he was offering Arison an out without questions about her disappearance or her background. Garrus knew there wouldn’t be another chance like this again. He wasn’t an idiot.

“A yes would suffice.”

No one could do this better than them. Besides, they still had connections, too, even if they hadn’t talked to anyone in years. Ash as a Spectre, Liara as the Shadow Broker, Tali as an Admiral, Vega was probably N7 now… They had more resources and allies than almost anyone else would. And they would be doing real good for the galaxy…

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Adrien looked to the clock at the bottom of the frozen screen for a second and then gave a small nod.

“You’ll find one of those stipends deposited directly into your account. I will be sending you information for a new account in which the second stipend will be deposited. In the meantime, I recommend you make yourself scarce, considering Caitus’ allies will not be too happy to see you any time soon.”

“Of course, sir.”

Garrus knew a dismissal when he heard one, so he got to his feet, snapped a salute, and by the time he was nearly at the door, he was surprised to hear Adrien say,

“And, Garrus, tell Commander Shepard I’m glad she is back in action. I look forward to seeing the results you two will produce.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this massive work! I certainly didn't expect it to be this large, but here we are. I ended up rewriting this epilogue a frankly disturbing number of times, but I'm finally happy with it. I hope this is a good holiday gift for everyone still reading.   
Also, it's not in this epilogue, but know that General Ternian is on a beach having cocktails with her wife and mentally flipping off every single turian politician, and trust me, she's very happy with that.


End file.
